Ukrainian President Zelensky announced no presidential elections

[David Lockmiller]

(11-13-2023 01:07 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Lincoln on the 1864 Election
November 10, 1864: In Response to a Serenade

It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its own existence in great emergencies.

On this point the present rebellion brought our republic to a severe test; and a presidential election occurring in regular course during the rebellion added not a little to the strain. If the loyal people, united, were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided, and partially paralyzed, by a political war among themselves?

But the election was a necessity.

We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. The strife of the election is but human-nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case, must ever recur in similar cases. Human-nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak, and as strong; as silly and as wise; as bad and good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.

But the election, along with its incidental, and undesirable strife, has done good too. It has demonstrated that a people's government can sustain a national election, in the midst of a great civil war. Until now it has not been known to the world that this was a possibility. It shows that, even among candidates of the same party, he who is most devoted to the Union, and most opposed to treason, can receive most of the people's votes. It shows also, to the extent yet known, that we have more men now, than we had when the war began. Gold is good in its place; but living, brave, patriotic men, are better than gold.

New York Times reports today (10/6/2025) in a story titled " . . . Democracy and the War in Ukraine":

Ukraine has been under martial law for nearly four years; Zelensky would otherwise have faced an election last year. Even his main rivals agree, though, that the country should refrain from a divisive, disruptive election while the war rages.

That has left democracy in Ukraine — which protesters shed blood to preserve a decade ago — in fragile shape. Long-running concerns about corruption have been exacerbated by fears that money for the war is being stolen. Ukrainians set aside their differences when the war began, but that sense of unity is fraying. One lawmaker told us Zelensky’s attempt to weaken the anticorruption agencies had made Ukraine more vulnerable to Russian efforts to sow political chaos — a shortcut to win the war.