KIEV, July 12. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Opposition Platform For Life has demanded resignation of the country’s president, Vladimir Zelensky, over economic failures and the country’s extreme dependence on Western creditors.
"The Ze-team (President Vladimir Zelensky’s team - TASS) has degraded to the level of an external colonial administration. Their only task, like during [Pyotr] Poroshenko’s presidency, is to implement instructions from foreign creditors, to ensure incomes for foreign financial profiteers, to sell out national riches and bankrupt Ukrainian families to line the pockets of bureaucrats and foreign administration agents. The Ze-team must follow its predecessors and step down before it devastates Ukraine," the party said in a statement posed on its website on Sunday.
The statement comes ahead of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) voting on a bill cancelling upper limits on wages to state officials as required by the International Monetary Fund. "Zelensky calls an extraordinary parliament session to consider the key issues of the Ze-agenda, i.e. to adopt bill No3708 initiated by the ‘servants’ (the president’s Servant of the People party - TASS) and Poroshenko’s faction. They want their people in the government to be paid millions-worth wages and bonuses," the statement says. "The Opposition Platform For Life demands the authorities stop implementing the IMF’s anti-popular requirements, to stop making a feedbox for themselves, Poroshenko’s friends and external influence agents out of Ukraine."
The party promised to vote against this bill and to insist on adopting a document setting an upper limit for payments to public officials and CEOs of state-run companies at a level of ten minimal wages, i.e. 47,200 hryvnias (1,750 US dollars).
"The country’s economy is in the most profound crisis, with big budgetary problems. According to international organizations, more than a half of Ukraine’s population may find themselves below the poverty line by the yearend," the party stressed, adding that raising wages to government officials looks "especially impertinent."
Amid the coronavirus quarantine measures and an economic slump in April, the Ukrainian government set the upper limit for wages to public officials and CEOs of government-run companies at ten minimal wages.