HLE positions: activating the issue
Lately, the topic of taking away the positions of the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, who were previously part of the Opposition Platform for Life group, has intensified. This is mentioned in the telegram channel.Country Politics“.
Now these deputies are in two groups. Most of them are in the “Platform for Life and Peace” group led by Yuriy Boyko, others are in the “Restoration of Ukraine” group, mainly comprised of deputies close to the business developer Vadym Stolar.
Recently, several requests have been made to the president to take away the positions from the deputies from the former Opposition Platform for Life. The issue is actively promoted in the media, but, as usual, the authorities are slow to respond to these demands. Last week, three deputies from the Opposition Platform for Life – Medvedchuk, Kozak, and Kuzmin – were stripped of their positions, but after the start of the Russian invasion, they did not appear in the Rada and now live in Russia.
Most of the other deputies from the Opposition Platform for Life in the Rada appear and vote. And they are not deprived of mandates.
There are two reasons for this. The first is legal. According to the Constitution, a deputy can only be deprived of their position in certain cases (such as resigning at their request, receiving a guilty verdict, being declared incompetent or missing by the court, losing citizenship, or moving abroad). And the Constitution cannot be changed during martial law.
However, as shown by the example of Medvedchuk and Kozak, it would be possible to take away the deputies' positions by first issuing decrees to strip them of Ukrainian citizenship.
But the authorities do not do this.
Because there is a second reason, the main one: deputies from the Opposition Platform for Life are now a crucial force that ensures effective voting on important bills for Zelensky.
Despite the fact that political differences in parliament have faded into the background since the beginning of the war, they have not disappeared. At the same time, everyone remembers that by the end of 2021, the dominant majority of the Servant of the People in the Rada, established after the 2019 elections, no longer existed in practice. And the authorities could only secure votes by negotiating with other factions and groups. A broad coalition of diverse forces was formed against Zelensky, including the prominent oligarch Akhmetov, the ex-speaker Razumkov, Petro Poroshenko, and Avakov. After February 24, the Rada initially voted highly disciplinedly for everything the authorities proposed, but after the critical first months of the war, discord began. The aforementioned coalition was not interested in further strengthening Zelensky's power, and the easiest way was to limit his ability to make decisions through the Rada.
HLE mandates: activating the topic
Zelensky’s previously close partner, Igor Kolomoisky, was also interested in this. He was unhappy that Zelensky had become too powerful and could not pay attention to his wishes (and even nationalized Kolomoisky’s stake in Ukrnafta). And if the president did not have enough votes to pass decisions through the Rada, he would be forced to seek help from Kolomoisky, his For the Future deputy group and deputies close to him in the Servant of the People faction.
However, here the people’s deputies from the former Opposition Platform for Life put a shoulder to the president. And thanks to their votes, Zelensky can carry out decisions without turning to either Kolomoisky or other beneficiaries of deputy groups.
Therefore, the forces interested in the fact that the president is chronically short of votes in the Rada are demanding that the mandates be taken away from the Opposition Platform for Life by organizing a campaign in support of this idea.
The motives, however, are different. If for Kolomoisky this is an attempt to regain the opportunity to bargain with Bankova, then for Poroshenko it is a general strategy to weaken power.
But, for now, obviously, Bankovaya is in no hurry to make such a gift to her opponents, despite the powerful informational pressure.
