As part of the minority opposition in parliament prior to December 2005, he spearheaded a reform drive by his party to introduce changes to Transnistria's electoral code. Among the changes were a requirement that purely technical qualifications be used as the basis for selecting polling station chairmen and a rule prohibiting state-owned media outlets from publishing results of polls and forecasts related to elections, so as to not influence free voter choice. This was reported in the United States State Department's Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2005. In a 2005 report the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe referred to Shevchuk in the context of democratic reform, noting that Transnistria "is moving towards more pluralism" and highlighted "the Transnistrian parliament's own initiatives on the reform of the political system" which were spearheaded by Shevchuk's bloc. After that the European Parliament banned Shevchuk from entry to the EU countries. On 22 July 2009, Shevchuk resigned from his post as speaker of parliament. Anatoliy Kaminski, who was vice-speaker under Shevchuk and is vice chairman of Shevchuk's Renewal party, was the only nominee to succeed him. Mikhail Burla, leader of Renewal and Chairman of the Committee for economic policy, budget and finance, was elected as the new vice-speaker. Shevchuk cited a controversial attempt to revise the county's constitution by president Igor Smirnov as the main reason for his resignation.
Presidency
In December 2011, Shevchuk was elected president of Transnistria. He won the first round of the presidential elections on 11 December, polling higher than either the sitting president Igor Smirnov or the Kremlin-backed Supreme Soviet chairman Anatoliy Kaminski. He then won the second round of voting with over 75% support on 25 December. He was inaugurated on 30 December 2011.
Post-presidency
On 28 June 2017, the parliament of Transnistria voted to remove Shevchuk's immunity from prosecution in connection with five pending criminal cases against the former President. Prior to this, on the evening of 27 June, Shevchuk crossed the border into Moldova. Shevchuk claimed that he crossed from PMR to Moldova in a taxi, whilst Russian-language media and certain PMR officials reported that he sailed across the Dnestr in a boat. On 30 June, Moldovan officials stated that they would not hand Shevchuk over to Transnistria. Transnistria issued an arrest warrant for Shevchuk at the end of November 2017. Later criminal cases count was raised up to six. Shevchuk is accused of corruption, smuggling, abuse of power, misappropriation of state money in especially large amounts, as well as unreasonable delay in the payment of pensions and salaries. In total, Shevchuk faces up to 12 years in prison.
