People's deputies from OPPLJ Vadim Rabinovich, Ilya Kiva, Viktor Medvedchuk, Vladimir Kaltsev during meeting of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Kyiv, February 3, 2021 Oleksandr Kuzmin/UNIAN
“There is no such gold in the world for crosses or anything that could cover the moral rust from ties with a terrorist state” – this is a quote from President Zelensky’s annual message to the Verkhovna Rada on the eve of 2023.
The President's speech in Parliament was met with loud applause. The representatives of the former “Opposition Platform – For Life”, who still remain with their powers, also applauded.
Information on why efforts that could remove these deputies from power are being blocked by the leadership of the party that the president brought to parliament is available in the hromadske material.
Still in power
The leaders of the “Servants” – David Arakhamia and Elena Shulyak – do not support the early removal of powers of deputies from the Opposition Platform for Life. They and almost 70 other parliamentarians refused to sign a request to the head of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk, in which they propose to put a number of relevant bills to the session hall for voting. The Batkivshchyna faction, almost entirely, also became an opponent of this initiative.
Before the full-scale invasion, the Opposition Platform for Life was the second largest parliamentary faction and consisted of 44 deputies. Some of them went abroad even before February 24.
According to a study by the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, six current deputies from the former Opposition Platform for Life have not voted in parliament since February 24, and four more have resigned their mandates. At the same time, Viktor Medvedchuk has not yet been deprived of his deputy powers.
In April 2022, the HLE suspended its activities by decision of the National Security and Defense Council, but this did not prevent the deputies who remained in Ukraine, as well as those who went abroad, to continue working in the parliament. They only changed the name: “Platform for Life and Peace”, created by 25 deputies from the dissolved faction, and “Restoration of Ukraine”, which included 12 deputies from the Opposition Platform for Life. Some remained non-factional.
The HLE itself was finally banned by the Administrative Court of Cassation as part of the Supreme Court of Ukraine in September at the initiative of the SBU. The reason was called destructive activity, a threat to national security and the relaying of Russian propaganda.
Currently, the activities of the deputies of this political force are being checked by the Office of the Prosecutor General together with the State Bureau of Investigation. Proceedings under the article on treason against all former factionalists of the Opposition Platform for Life were opened only at the end of last month.
“Pocket” faction
The parliament paid attention to the deputies from the Opposition Platform for Life much earlier, they want to deprive the representatives of pro-Russian parties of their mandates at the local and national levels. But the documents that propose to do this “hung” – they are not put up for voting.
For example, draft law No. 7476 has not been considered for six months, although it was created to implement the presidential decree and the decision of the National Security and Defense Council. It proposes to deprive the deputies of local councils from banned parties of their powers. In addition to seats in parliament, the former HROPS now has almost 3.5 thousand of its deputies in local councils.
In order to deprive HLE representatives of the status of people's deputy, parliamentarians from European Solidarity initiated resolution No. 7694. Document registered at the end of the summer, has not yet been considered by the committee. The petition of Oleksiy Goncharenko, who is one of the initiators, demanding that the resolution be considered, received 30,000 votes from Ukrainians.
Zelensky responded to the petition and asked the head of parliament to “develop proposals and inform the author of the appeal about the results of consideration.” Stefanchuk, according to Goncharenko, replied that such a decision would be unconstitutional.
Oleg Dunda, a member of the Servant of the People faction, co-author of this resolution, adds: “In fact, everything depends on the speaker of the parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, and the head of the faction, David Arakhamia. At the conciliation council they make a decision on putting bills to a vote. If they still have not been able to raise these issues and vote, respectively, these two people are blocking them.”
At the same time, the mono-majority continues to cooperate with pro-Russian politicians in committees.
“Shufrich is the head of the Parliamentary Committee on Freedom of Speech. One vote – and you can take away this position from him, but “servants” do not do this, ”notes Alexey Goncharenko.
People's representatives also communicate outside of working hours. In December, UP journalists recorded a meeting between the head of the Servant of the People faction and a deputy from the Opposition Platform for Life, Suto Mamayan, in a restaurant in the capital. Similar meetings of Arakhamia were recorded before.
In 2021, he explained why he met with representatives of different factions: “I have such a job, I collect votes in parliament.”
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Hromadske's interlocutors from the Servant of the People faction claim that there is a certain agreement – deputies from the former Opposition Platform for Life vote on the orders of the leadership of the “servants”. At the same time, they do not give the green light to bills that affect the livelihoods of former members of the already banned party.
“Arakhamia received a “pocket” faction that will vote on his command and for those issues that will not be resolved support other colleagues,” explains one of the deputies of the Servant of the People faction in a comment to hromadske.
At the same time, the OPPL is trying to maintain its political influence or business, believes Oleksiy Koshel, head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, and adds: “ We clearly see that a compromise is being sought on a number of issues.”
People's Deputies from the Opposition Platform for Life during a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Ukraine, Kyiv, February 3, 2021 Alexander Kuzmin/UNIANThe monomajority easily finds allies from other factions to pass bills promoting reforms or aimed at European integration and improving the situation in the national security and defense sector.
“But since they also solve their own selfish issues, then, of course, under such conditions, it is much easier for them to negotiate with those who ate the dog on this, ”says Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, MP from the Holos faction.
Only recently, deputies from the former Opposition Platform for Life, together with “servants”, supported a number of dubious bills that caused public outrage. Among such initiatives: a new selection of judges to the Constitutional Court (which even the European Commission is concerned about) and the abolition of lifelong financial monitoring for officials.
Voting for a bill on urban development reform was the most indicative. He was supported by 228 deputies out of 226 needed. And the votes of the deputies from the former Opposition Platform for Life became decisive.
The author of the bill, a representative of the leadership of the “servants”, the head of the party, Elena Shulyak, got into a scandal because of an attempt to “protect” the bill from public criticism. To sort things out, she came to the hospital to the wounded soldier and activist Oleg Simoroz. During the meeting, Simoroz said: “Instead of fighting the pro-Russian gang, you pass laws in the interests of the construction mafia.”
The bill was supported, in particular, by former members of the OPLJ Nestor Shufrich, Sergei Magera, Vladimir Kaltsev, Sergei Dunaev and Alexander Kachny. The latter, by the way, in January last year, on the air of the NASH channel, said that the West is trying to drag Russia into a war with Ukraine in order to turn all European countries against the Russian Federation.
Hromadske's interlocutors in the Committee on Urban Development call one of the “ultimate beneficiaries” of this bill, a deputy from the former HRP, Dmitry Isaenko. He is the secretary of the committee in which Shulyak works and is connected with the construction business. Shulyak insists that her colleagues from the former Opposition Platform for Life in the committee are “working constructively.”
“Isaenko is a lobbyist for the construction business because he is a developer. Shulyak herself is also a developer,” says one of the deputies from the Servant of the People.
In the declaration of the people’s deputy for 2020, it is noted that she is a co-owner of three companies involved in construction audit. Shulyak also refused to take part in the collection of signatures for the submission to the vote of bills on the deprivation of mandates of representatives of the HSE.
Volodymyr Zelensky could have vetoed the “urban planning reform”, but did not do so. The bill was sent to the president on December 19, and according to the law, if the head of state does not use his right to ban within 15 days, the document is automatically considered supported.
HPLE and an unconstitutional decision?
Oleksandr Kachura, a people's deputy from “servants”, denies accusations of cooperation of his fellow party members with representatives of the former Opposition Platform for Life, and explains joint voting as follows: “They support the state decisions of the Ukrainian authorities, because they have a banal instinct for self-preservation in the face of public fury.”
He says this about the “urban reform”: “This bill was put forward at the end of the day. If it had been put in place earlier, then, I think, we could have collected more votes even without representatives of the fragments of the Opposition Platform for Life.
Kachura claims that in the monomajority “almost everyone is in favor of putting an end” to the issue of depriving the mandates of deputies from the Opposition Platform for Life.
“But deputies in our and other factions see ways to solve it differently. That is, we have a discussion inside only about what legal mechanism will be chosen, but in general, I think everyone supports the idea. There are different bills, there are different points of view. Here the issue is the legal impeccability of the decision,” the deputy says.
People's deputies are indeed protected from HLE by the Constitution, where there is a clear list of reasons for the early termination of the powers of parliamentarians. It is impossible to make changes to it during martial law.
The above-mentioned resolution No. 7694, co-authored by Aleksey Goncharenko and Oleg Dunda, proposes to terminate the powers of people's deputies from the Opposition Platform for Life due to the withdrawal of these deputies from the party faction and departure to permanent residence outside Ukraine.
“This resolution has constitutional shortcomings, since two different grounds for the early termination of the powers of people's deputies are mixed in one decision of the Verkhovna Rada. In addition, the Constitution does not contain such a basis (for the termination of powers – ed.) as the dissolution of a faction. Therefore, I would suggest considering the issue of early termination of the powers of each deputy separately on the appropriate basis provided for in Article 81 of the Constitution,” says Oleksandr Marusyak, a specialist in constitutional and international law.
There is another initiative in the parliament that leaves mandates to deputies, but does not allow participation in plenary sessions. However, bill No. 7424 is also far from flawless. In particular, it “does not understand the legal status of parliamentarians, who, if the proposed draft is adopted, will be deprived of some of their powers,” the GNEU concluded.
Most of the deputies with whom hromadske talked are sure: , limiting the activities of the former HLE, will end up in the session hall, the deputies will unequivocally accept them.
“This is a litmus test, the society simply cannot take another decision,” MP Oleg Dunda believes.
“It is unlikely that there will be 45 deputies at all who are ready to arrange political suicide and launch an appeal against such a law (if it is adopted — ed.) in the Constitutional Court,” adds Dmitry Gurin, people’s deputy from the Servant of the People faction.
Evgeniy Shulgat
It became known which of the people's deputies did not support the deprivation of the mandates of the Opposition Platform for Life Deputies
The deputy of the former Opposition Platform for Life, Suto Mamoyan, arranged a “shadow office” in a restaurant in Kiev and met there with Kaskiv and Arakhamia
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