Expert: Tomos to be “granted” not once before presidential elections
For Poroshenko, the signing of an agreement with Patriarch Bartholomew is another means of political PR on issues of religion, Alexei Yakubin thinks.
The President of Ukraine is interested in the Tomos exclusively in the light of the upcoming elections, and therefore the autocephaly will be repeatedly “granted” until March 31, 2019, says political analyst Alexei Yakubin.
“I think we will see “the Tomos granting” several times before the end of the presidential campaign,” he commented on the signing of the agreement between Petro Poroshenko and Patriarch Bartholomew on the 1Kozak tv channel.
The expert recalled that the President had repeatedly promised to withdraw from the process of granting the Tomos immediately after the meeting of the Synod of the Constantinople Patriarchate. The meeting took place, the Phanar voiced its decisions, which were celebrated in Kiev with the action “Cahors on the Maidan”, they even started discussing the convening of a “unification Council”, and then the head of state again becomes an active participant in internal church affairs.
“Why was additional agreement needed? Maybe, it was needed, because Poroshenko again decided to self-PR on this topic,” Yakubin assumed.
According to the political expert, the status of the document is questionable. Poroshenko holds the post of President of Ukraine, Patriarch Bartholomew is a citizen of the Republic of Turkey. “If this is an international agreement, then it requires ratification in the Supreme Council,” the expert stressed. However, the document has not been ratified yet, and its text has not even been published.
Yakubin considers paradoxical events that occur around the bestowal of the Tomos. He recalled that the people chose politicians to solve political and socio-economic problems. Instead, the secular authorities are concerned with matters of religion. The political analyst called such activity of the country's leadership "an obvious violation of the Constitution".
On November 3, Poroshenko and Patriarch Bartholomew signed a cooperation agreement. The President commented on the agreement with the Phanar: “This is a cooperation agreement on the establishment of an independent Orthodox Church in Ukraine, the Ecumenical Patriarch grants the Tomos, recognizing the independence of the Ukrainian Church, and presents it to the Primate elected at the Council.”
