"The society has very inflated expectations from the law about the ban of the UOC," - MP Dunda

The head of the inter-factional association of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine «For the Decolonization and Dismantling of the Russian Empire», MP from the Servant of the People party, Oleg Dunda, commented on the government’s further steps after the adoption of the scandalous bill No. 8371, aimed at banning the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Dunda believes that society has too high expectations from this legislative initiative, and the UOC will not disappear from Ukraine even after the law is voted through. He said this in an interview with UWORLD.NEWS.

«What is the problem with this bill? The fact that a separate decision must be made for each individual object, for each individual church, and there is a rather complicated procedure. The SSU and many related services should be involved. Accordingly, each story must have a final court decision. We understand how this can be delayed. Accordingly, we will have a problem both in the SSU and in the Cabinet of Ministers, where there will be people who will slow down this process. In fact, for each individual facility, and we have thousands of them, these cases will drag on for several years. This is the problem with this draft law. That is, we are revealing not only the problems of the UOC-MP, but also the problems of the state apparatus, which contains many potential collaborators who are ready to leave the situation as it is, and they will use the provisions of this law to do nothing,» — the MP said.

Dunda added that there will be great disappointment in society that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church cannot be banned in one fell swoop. He is convinced that the state will get bogged down in litigation, which will take more than one year.

«We will have one problem, and it will be very bad: people have this vision that after the bill is passed, the next day there will be no UOC-MP in Ukraine. But this is not the case, and they will go to church on Sunday and think that there is no church, but they will see a sign of the UOC-MP. They will be disappointed and will say: «Wait, we were deceived?» And to explain to them that this is a separate procedure for each object, there will be a court case, and this is the first instance, the second instance, the third instance. It will be very difficult to explain this to them. There will be great disappointment because they have been deceived. The expectations of the society will not match the reality,» — Dunda added.

Earlier, we reported that the state is preparing a «special status» for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which will be applied after the adoption of Bill No. 8371, aimed at banning the UOC. This status will affect the part of the Church that is ready to break with the ROC but does not agree to unite with the OCU.