KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th January, 2020) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has withdrawn the bill to amend the constitution, decentralizing the national administrative framework, and submitted it for revision, the president's office announced on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy met with the deputy heads of the Servant of the People parliamentary group, which is currently the largest in the country's parliament.
"Following the meeting, the Head of State decided to withdraw his draft law 'On Amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine (on Decentralization of Power)' (registration number 2598) and submit it for revision," the office said in a statement.
The representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in the Trilateral Contact Group, DPR Foreign Minister Natalya Nikonorova, said that she was satisfied with Zelenskyy's move.
"We know that today the president of Ukraine withdrew his draft, since it was not aimed at decentralization at all, but rather at centralization of power. And even Ukraine's local self-government bodies declare this. We know that the leaders of the Normandy format are not satisfied with that project and believe that it does not correspond to the set of measures [to implement the Minsk agreements on Donbas settlement]," Nikonorova told reporters after the meeting of the contact group in Minsk.
Any draft amendments to the constitution should be agreed in Minsk, since it should take into account the particularities of individual regions, Nikonorova added.
Zelenskyy put forward the bill in mid-December last year. It proposed to change Ukraine's administrative structure, making the country's territorial units more independent from Kiev, as well as introducing the new position of a prefect to represent the government in the regions. The Ukrainian opposition has criticized the bill for allegedly giving the president too much authority. The embassies of Canada, Germany, and Sweden expressed their disapproval as well.
