Ukrainian President’s Team Confident of Winning Snap-Vote Ruling

(Bloomberg) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s team is bullish on the chances the Constitutional Court will uphold plans to hold snap parliamentary elections next month.

Zelenskiy, a TV comedian with no political experience who was sworn in last month, currently has no representation in the legislature and wants to capitalize on his nascent party’s high poll ratings to consolidate his power.

But while support among Ukrainians for an early vote has jumped to almost 90%, Zelenskiy’s rivals have asked the court to invalidate the decree bringing elections forward to July 21 from October on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. They’ve also been obstructing his early efforts to install new faces to key posts.

“From the point of view of legal purity, the decree is impeccable,” Fedir Venislavskyi, a professor of constitutional law who’s representing Zelenskiy, said in an interview in his office in Kiev. “The president acted within his constitutional rights.”

Ukrainian law stipulates that 10 of the court’s 17 judges must agree on the ruling, which should come by June 29, according to Venislavskyi. The president will comply with whatever the court decides, he said. The court, which is deliberating in a closed session, hasn’t commented on when it may deliver its ruling.

In the meantime, support for Zelenskiy’s party has continued to swell. The latest poll puts his party on 37%, way ahead of the more established opponents.

To contact the reporters on this story: Yulia Surkova in Kiev at ysurkova@bloomberg.net;Daryna Krasnolutska in Kiev at dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net, Andrew Langley, Tony Halpin

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