Poroshenko doesn't intend to demand new powers
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko finds the parliamentary-presidential form of government the most suitable for Ukraine and doesn't intend to demand greater powers for the president.
"The current form of government that has evolved here is optimal for Ukraine," he said on Sunday addressing graduates of the National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy".
The parliamentary form "is problematic now given the aggression and strong, long-standing military threat to Ukraine," he said.
It is impossible to counter such challenges without a president – the supreme commander-in-chief having sufficient powers, Poroshenko said.
"What the Constitution gives me is enough for me and I don't intend to ask for more the way other presidents, my predecessors did," he said.
He said that from time to time it is said that the presidential form of government would have been more effective. "And probably in the present conditions, it would have been so, but with the Revolution of Dignity the people of Ukraine clearly declared that there should be no authoritarian rule in the country," the president said.
"The excessive power of presidents in former Soviet republics has become a feature of authoritarian regimes, even dictatorial at times. And we have taken a resolute and irreversible step beyond this undemocratic reservation," Poroshenko said.
