Without rebooting govt and mono-majority in Rada, it is impossible to solve problems at front – Herashchenko
The new 2025 year must begin with a reboot of the government and a mono-majority in the Verkhovna Rada, co-chair of the European Solidarity faction Iryna Herashchenko said.
"Under martial law, it is impossible to hold elections so that they are democratic, transparent, and recognized by the world. Therefore, based on these realities, it is necessary to reformat the parliamentary majority. And this is how 2025 must begin," Herashchenko told Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.
The MP said that in the Verkhovna Rada there has not been a mono-majority of the Servant of the People faction for a long time: "someone is abroad and has fled, someone has left the faction, someone chronically does not go to work, someone does not know what they are doing at all." She noted that the absence of a mono-majority is also evidenced by the results of votes at plenary sessions of the parliament.
"In 2024, there was not a single vote in the Rada in which a mono-majority would have given 226 votes," the MP recalled, adding that during the votes, Servant of the People is assisted by MPs elected to parliament on the lists of the currently banned Opposition Platform – For Life party.
According to Herashchenko, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, having become president, in 2019 "absolutely illegally dissolved parliament," because, according to him, there was no coalition there.
"So now there is no mono-majority. And Zelenskyy must honestly admit this, as well as Stefanchuk [Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada] and reformat the majority," Herashchenko said.
"We need to start 2025 by recognizing the truth and creating a coalition of pro-Ukrainian, pro-European, pro-NATO forces in parliament, a coalition of victory, a democratic coalition and, of course, by reformatting the government," the MP said.
According to the co-chair of the faction, the current government "is intellectually incapable of creating a program for Ukraine to emerge from a severe crisis."
"We see constant corruption scandals that cover the government. We see management chaos in all areas... This is unacceptable in a country at war," Herashchenko said, emphasizing that the time has come for the authorities to account for their work.
Herashchenko sees a way out of the current situation in the formation of a government of national unity.
"A government of national unity in the absence of elections could strengthen power very seriously. We are talking, first of all, about responsibility now... Without such a reboot of the mono-majority and the government, it is impossible to solve the problems at the front," Herashchenko said.
According to the faction co-chairman, the priorities of the work of "European Solidarity" in the Verkhovna Rada next year will be the integration of Ukraine into the European Union and NATO...
"The key priority is European integration. We believe that today it depends only on Ukraine how quickly and professionally we will go this way," the MP said.
She said at the current stage, in negotiations with partners on joining the EU, it is important to protect the national interests of Ukraine.
"We see from many preliminary agreements that there is such a position – sometimes to agree, instead of finding... compromises and always protecting the national interest," the MP said.
She expressed regret that the intellectual potential of the European Solidarity team, which includes such strong experts on European integration issues as Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Petro Poroshenko, and Maria Ionova, is not being used in these negotiations.
"The second priority is NATO… It was our team, both when it was in power and when it was in opposition, that always insisted that the only and only security umbrella for Ukraine was its membership in NATO," Herashchenko said.
According to the MP, the security agreements signed in recent years with some countries do not provide Ukraine with any security guarantees. She noted that as a result, time has been lost, and today it is necessary to focus on the issue of Ukraine's integration into the North Atlantic Alliance, although there is currently a "very small window of opportunity" to resolve it.
"And, of course, we need to work not only on an invitation to NATO, but also on membership, so that it does not turn out like with Turkey, when there is an invitation, and then 40 years of nothing," the MP said.
She also noted the importance of interparliamentary diplomacy and its successes, although she recalled that European Solidarity had to fight for participation in it.
"Now, when due to our public position, due to criticism, due to the fact that we have achieved that our partners are already talking in the European Commission report about the need to stop blocking interparliamentary diplomacy, we see real results and successes. All of our interparliamentary delegations are working successfully, where there are representatives of all factions. This is our strength, that outwardly we speak with one voice and one team," Herashchenko said.