Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has decided to set up a team of experts to assess the results of the “judicial reform” conducted by his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko. “Recently we have been concerned by the situation with various courts (in particular the ‘reformed’ ones) proclaiming rulings which lawyers think were not based on the requirements of the Ukrainian Constitution and the law,” Ruslan Riaboshapka, deputy chief of the presidential administration, said.
The presence of such court rulings was a “glaring testament to the failure of the judicial reform” carried out on Poroshenko’s watch, he said.
“This led the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to decide to form a group of experts to assess the results of the ‘judicial reform’ and prepare legislative and practical steps to urgently resolve the problems of functioning of the judicial branch of government,” Riaboshapka said.
Both the public and Zelensky’s administration expect a swift and principled reaction from the Supreme Council of Justice to such court rulings, the official said.
Just under a half of Ukrainians (48.4%) said they would vote for Volodymyr Zelensky and 17% for the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko, were the second round of the presidential election held right now, according to the findings of a poll conducted by the Kiyv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on April 9-14. Seventeen point nine per cent were undecided, 1.6% were going to ruin the ballot, 6.3% did not intend to go to the polls and 8.8% refused to answer the question.
KIIS interviewed 2,004 respondents in 129 towns across Ukraine; in Luhansk and Donetsk region, the poll was conducted only in Ukraine-controlled parts of the regions.
The runoff is due to be held on April 21.
Presidential candidates Volodymyr Zelensky and incumbent President Petro Poroshenko have received 30.40% and 16.03% of votes cast on March 31, respectively, according to Ukraine’s Central Election Commission (CEC) with 80.20% of voting protocols processed.
According to the CEC website, 13.24% of voters cast ballots for Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko, followed by Opposition Platform – For Life candidate Yuriy Boiko – 11.55%.
Civil Position Party leader Anatoliy Hrytsenko received 7.03%, followed by ex-SBU State Security Service head Ihor Smeshko – 5.95%, Radical Party leader Oleh Liashko – 5.29%, Opposition Bloc leader Oleksandr Vilkul – 4.3% and Svoboda Party leader Ruslan Koshulynsky – 1.65%.
Some 1.18% of ballots cast were ruled invalid.
Zelensky, Poroshenko reach second round of presidential race – national exit poll
Showman Volodymyr Zelensky is the leader in the first round of the presidential election in Ukraine with 30.4% supportive votes, incumbent head of state Petro Poroshenko has 17.8% of the votes, leader of Batkivschyna Party Yulia Tymoshenko – 14.2%, according to the National exit poll.
Some 9.8% of voters backed the candidate from the Opposition Platform – For Life Yuri Boiko, 7.1% of voters cast their votes in favor of leader of Hromadianska Pozytsia (Civil Position) Party Anatoliy Hrytsenko, 6.4% – former Security Service Head Ihor Smeshko, 4.8% – leader of Radical Party Oleh Liashko, and 4.0% – candidate from the Opposition Block – the Party of Peace and Development Oleksandr Vilkul.
In the regional context, Zelensky is leading in the south of Ukraine (42.0%), 30.7% of Ukrainians in the east cast their votes in favor of Zelensky, 28.6% in the center and 21.2% in the west of the country.
Poroshenko got the most of votes in the west of Ukraine (26.0%), 19.5% in the center, 11.1% in the south and in 9.6% the east.
Tymoshenko has almost the same support in the west (17.8%) and in the center of Ukraine (17.5%), in the south she was supported by 9.5% of voters, and by 7.3% in the east.
Some 27.2% voted in favor of Boiko in the east of Ukraine, 15.2% in the south, 5.7% in the center, and 1.9% in the west.
Hrytsenko saw the greatest support in the west of the country (12.6%), 7.4% in the center, 3.3% in the south and 2.7% in the east.
The national exit poll was conducted by a consortium of Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and the Razumkov Centre.
Anatoliy Hrytsenko, the presidential candidate of Ukraine, the leader of the Civil Position party, has stated that under no circumstances he will support presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko in the second round, and he also cannot agitate to vote for presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky.
“I don’t want another five years of falsehood, deceit, looting on blood for the country, and therefore under any circumstances I will not support and vote for Petro Poroshenko. I know him very well. I also cannot say to vote or not to vote for Volodymyr Zelensky,” he said on the air of TV Channel 1+1 on Sunday.
According to the exit poll conducted on the order of the 112 Ukraine TV Channel (112.ua) and NewsOne, showman Volodymyr Zelensky is leading in the presidential race with 30.7% of the votes, incumbent President of Ukraine gains 18.6%, while leader of the Batkivschyna party Yulia Tymoshenko has 13.9% of the vote.
According to the exit poll data as of 18:00 on Sunday, made public after the completion of voting in Ukraine, the top five candidates in terms of electoral support also included candidate from the Opposition Platform-For Life party Yuri Boiko with 10.3% of the votes, and leader of the Civil Position party Anatoliy Hrytsenko with 7.3% of the vote.
The all-Ukrainian exit poll on the order of the 112 Ukraine and NewsOne TV Channels was conducted by the Institute for Social Research and Consulting SORA (Austria) and the Ukrainian Center for Social Monitoring.
Some 26,548 people had been polled as of 18:00 on Sunday, the margin of error is no more than 2.1%.
