03 December 2021, Friday, 17:21 381

Foreigners Living Abroad And Having Received Ukrainian Citizenship Will Not Be Able To Vote In Elections - Arakhamia

Редактор: Daria Zubkova

The chairperson of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada, David Arakhamia, said that according to the bill No. 6368 on dual citizenship submitted by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, persons who have received Ukrainian citizenship, but live abroad on a permanent basis, will not be able to vote in elections in Ukraine.

He announced this to journalists on Friday, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

"There (in the bill) there are two fuses. The first is the aggressor country. People who have a Russian passport cannot take a Ukrainian passport. Secondly, a person must decide, for example, if he is a citizen of Canada or a U.S. citizen and at the same time received a Ukrainian passport, he must decide for which government, where he votes. If he lives in the United States and has a Ukrainian passport, he will not be able to vote here, because he votes for the President of the United States, for their Senate. A person cannot vote for power in two countries, this is not how it works. There is a principle of nomadism. If his center of vital interests is here, he votes for power here, if there, for power there," the MP noted.

Arakhamia stressed that the principle of nomadism is understood as a certain number of years lived in one country and at least 180 days a year as a condition for differentiating electoral rights.

Besides, according to Arakhamia, the adoption of the bill does not require amendments to the Constitution.

"The majority of constitutionalists regard a single citizenship as when there was a threat to lose Crimea, and they said "single", meaning a single one throughout Ukraine, that is, there is no "Poltava" citizenship, "Mykolaiv", "Vinnytsia" or "Crimean". Then, when it was adopted, this was the interpretation of this norm on single citizenship," the parliamentarian noted.

According to Article 4 of the Constitution, there is a single citizenship in Ukraine, and the grounds for the acquisition and termination of Ukrainian citizenship are determined by law.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, Zelenskyy proposes the Verkhovna Rada allow dual citizenship for foreign Ukrainians and introduce the declaration of multiple citizenship by civil servants.