Legislative regulation of the referendum in Ukraine

Abstract

The article is devoted to highlighting the current aspects of the legislative regulation of the referendum as an important form of direct people’s power, which is of decisive importance for modern Ukrainian constitutionalism, determines the directions of development of our society and the state, and is also designed to ensure the free expression of will of all citizens in a wide range of issues. The modern world is filled with slogans of many states about “which of them is more democratic and where freedom of expression of will is greater”. One of the manifestations of the presence of the above in the countries is the achieved level of people’s power in the country, that is, the extent to which the existing procedures for expressing the will and exercising the will of the people affect the management of public and state affairs. The formation of a civil society and the development of a legal state involve the transformation of the people from the object of state administration to the main subject of power, which necessitates the development and improvement of all forms of people’s government, which means the broad and active participation of citizens in the management of the affairs of the state and society. Along with this, those institutions of democracy that allow the people to directly solve the most important problems of social and state life are of priority. In Ukraine, the recognition of the people in the Constitution as the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power, as well as the establishment of the ability to exercise power by the people directly and through state and local authorities, became a serious step in the creation of a democratic and legal state.Referendum is an important form of direct people’s power, which consists in the voting of voters, as a result of which decisions are made on issues of a state or self-governing nature. Considering the importance of this issue, there were many laws in the Ukrainian legislation that were supposed to regulate all issues related to the referendum, such as: the concept of a referendum, the procedure for its holding and the onset of legal responsibility for violating the legislation on the referendum. However, over time, all these laws were repeatedly changed in connection with the discovery of so-called “pitfalls” in them, including: the inconsistency of some norms of the constitution, the lack of regulation of some issues, etc.