Lozynskyi: the right to be elected for service members will be ensured through the commander's tacit consent

The mechanism for granting leave will operate automatically.

Service members who want to run in the first postwar elections can be guaranteed the right to leave through the legal principle of the commander’s tacit consent.

This was stated in an interview with LB.ua by the first deputy chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on the Organization of State Power and a Ukrainian Armed Forces service member, Roman Lozynskyi.

Lozynskyi explained that the right to leave for candidate registration and campaigning must be clearly regulated so that a commander cannot block a subordinate’s candidacy because of personal feelings. He described the risk of delay when there are only two weeks to submit documents.

“Either I approve your leave at the start of the third week or at the end of the second,” and you’ll have one day left, and you physically won’t have time to take photos, travel, submit documents, organize everything,” the MP said.

For that reason, he said, the mechanism for granting leave will work automatically: the commander must approve the report within 24 or 48 hours.

“And if he does not approve it, it is considered automatically approved. This is a principle in law called the principle of tacit consent — to prevent this ‘I’m putting it in the drawer because I don’t like him or her,’” Lozynskyi noted.

The deputy also drew attention to the need to regulate the issue of campaigning by a service member who acquires candidate status.