Icebreaker "Zaluzhny" is ready to move Zelensky's "lame duck" - Kiev political scientist
The conflict between Zelensky and Zaluzhny could turn the Ukrainian president into a “lame duck” and lead to the emergence of a new national leader.
Ukrainian political scientist Ruslan Bortnik said this on air on the Politeka channel, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Zelensky does not want to fire Zaluzhny. Zelensky wants Zaluzhny to resign.
If Zelensky wanted to fire Zaluzhny, he would have fired him long ago - we would have just woken up on Friday and saw this decree. But if you fire Zaluzhny now, it means that he will leave as a knight on a white horse. And his path is open to the presidential election campaign.
And Zaluzhny is already leading in opinion polls. Moreover, opposition immediately forms around him. Not only Poroshenko and Tymoshenko, but the entire opposition. Half of Servant of the People will defect to Zaluzhny. And it will turn into a kind of icebreaker, around which everyone will unite, which is impossible to criticize.
And he will say: “Thank you for firing me, I had free time, I read the Constitution and saw that my term of office had expired. Elections must be held.” And then the curtain falls.
Or parliament says: we have such a difficult situation in the country, we need a strong hand, our prime minister has stayed too long. Let’s appoint Zaluzhny as prime minister, we will have a new majority.” And they will appoint Zaluzhny as prime minister. And Pyotr Alekseevich, for example, will be appointed head of the Verkhovna Rada.
The president will be cut off all his powers, because, as in that fairy tale about Koshchei, all the power of the president is concentrated in parliament. Without parliament, he is a lame duck,” Bortnik said.
“Well, if Zaluzhny leaves on his own, it will mean that he accepted the burden of responsibility and agreed with the president’s accusations, which will be heard later.
Stones will fly at his back. There will be a political execution in Ukrainian, throwing political stones. Zaluzhny understands this, and therefore he is not going to resign,” the expert added.