Wartime Election in Ukraine? Yes or No
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If Winston Churchill were still with us, he would surely be advising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ignore international pressure to call elections. Much like Ukrainians in 2023, the British in 1940 were fighting a war of national survival. Every October for five consecutive years, the wartime British government led by Winston Churchill obtained legislative consent to postpone scheduled elections and extend the life of the sitting British parliament.
Churchill’s reasons for doing so were obvious and in many ways apply equally to today’s Ukraine. In 1940, Britain sought to avoid the distraction and potentially divisive impact of elections in order to maintain national resilience and focus all its energy on the war. The Churchill government also recognized the impracticality of holding an election with millions of displaced people across and beyond the nation, and saw that it would be virtually impossible to ensure a fair test of public opinion with Britain under daily attack and engaged in a global war.
In line with Ukraine’s peacetime election cycles, the country was due to hold a parliamentary election in late 2023 and a presidential vote in spring 2024. However, the introduction of martial law following Russia’s February 2022 invasion means elections cannot currently take place. Nevertheless, in recent months some international officials and commentators have begun calling for Ukraine to stage elections in 2024, arguing that this would underline Ukraine’s democratic credentials.
According to the same logic, critics say failure to hold elections would discredit efforts to portray Ukraine as an emerging democracy defending itself against autocratic Russia, thereby weakening one of the central narratives underpinning Western support for Ukraine. Needless to say, Moscow can be expected to exploit any Ukrainian hesitancy in order to fuel skepticism toward Ukraine throughout the democratic world.
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I agree with you guys.
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The hell??
The discussion about Ukrainian elections is partly being pushed by US politicians ahead of the country's election in 2024, particularly by a small group within the Republican party, says Olha Aivazovska, chairwoman of the election monitoring network Opora.
