A total of 163 petitions were filed with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanding that he veto the draft laws. This is almost twice as many as during the work of the Parliament under Petro Poroshenko.
However, only 7 petitions to Zelenskyy demanding that he veto a law passed by the Verkhovna Rada received more than 25,000 signatures, which obliges the president to provide citizens with answers.
During the previous parliament’s term, no veto petition received 25,000 votes. These are the findings of a study by the Golka civic initiative and the Centre for Innovation Development.
Zelensky responded to 4 of the 7 petitions that received votes. Iryna Fedoriv, head of the Golka civic initiative, said:
“The President ignored two petitions: on vetoing the urban planning ‘reform’ 5655 by the head of the Servant of the People party Olena Shulyak and the law ‘On Time Calculation’ by the Speaker of the Parliament Ruslan Stefanchuk. In times of war, when there are no elections, it is important for our Western partners to see that we have digital democracy tools in place. The president cannot respond to some petitions and ignore others, creating a warm bath for Shulyak or Stefanchuk. But it should be noted that these laws remained unsigned. That is, citizens still achieved results and there are cases when petitions work. As for the petition of Michel Tereshchenko, a descendant of the Tereshchenko family , who demanded to veto the scandalous project to nullify claims against forest and coastal plunderers, the president unfortunately ignored it. The lobbying of unscrupulous businesses was many times stronger here, and this is despite the fact that their petition demanding the signing of the law did not receive 25,000 votes despite a large-scale information campaign involving advertising.”
Ukrainians have become so united during the war that they can collect 25,000 votes in less than 90 days, and sometimes in a day. All of these petitions demanding the veto of the project received the required number of votes after 24 February 2022.
Kateryna Ivanchenko, director of the Centre for Innovations Development, which introduced the tool of petitions to the president and participatory budgeting in Kyiv, emphasises:
“This research proves that Ukrainians successfully use such a tool as petitions. They are able to mobilise and collect the required 25,000 votes, when the topic is really resonant, within a day. This was the case with Oleksandr Yabchanka‘s petition to veto the law that restored the declaration of assets only partially. The same happened with the petition to veto the urban planning “reform”. But these two topics were in the public eye. By law, the time limit for vetoes is limited to 15 calendar days. The relevant Regulations state that it takes 2 working days for petitions to be published and 3 working days for a petition with 25,000 votes to be submitted for consideration. That is, the procedural moment itself can take up to 10 calendar days. And we have already seen that in some cases, citizens submit veto petitions in advance – before the parliament votes.”
The Needle Initiative has appealed to the Presidential Office to immediately amend the Regulations that affect the timing of publication and consideration of veto petitions. The Centre for Innovations Development is ready to help the Presidential Office to improve the petition tool immediately.