You're reading: Clash over personal voting in parliament

The preparatory meeting of parliament leaders ahead of the year's first session hit the skids in discussions over personal voting, signalling that the new session after the winter break will be eventful as neither the pro-government majority, nor the opposition are prepared to give ground on some issues.

The parliament’s first session in 2013 is scheduled
for Tuesday, Feb. 5, at 10 a.m. The Feb.
4 preparatory meeting, called to set the agenda, was effectively hijacked by
leaders of the opposition who pressed on with their demand that voting be done
personally. This is a constitutional and legal demand that for years has been
ignored by the pro-presidential Party of Regions and allies who currently
control the majority.

Before last year’s parliamentary election, a public
campaign for personal voting gained force in Ukraine. Carrying on the momentum
are the three oppositional parties, who have had to resort to measures like
blocking the tribune to stop voting for other people, but with limited success.

Vitaly Klitschko, leader of UDAR party, threatened that the opposition
will boycott the work of parliament until the law on personal voting is passed.
Arseniy Yatseniuk, leader of Batkivshchyna, said that until the
personal voting is ensured, all the decisions of the parliament are
unconstitutional and should be vetoed by the president.

Speaker Volodymyr Rybak, however, was unimpressed, and
turned down the opposition’s proposal to activate sensor button voting, which
requires a fingerprint of each of the deputies. He promised that the parliament
itself will take a vote on the use of touch-sensitive voting button in the morning  of Feb. 5 session.

Touch-sensitive voting button system was installed for Verkhovna
Rada’s 450 deputies when Yatseniuk was speaker in 2007-2008 by his initiative,
but has never been used. Representatives of pro-government factions and the
opposition haggled for some time over whether the system is still in good
technical order to use, but came to nothing.

Oleksandr Yefremov, leader of the Party of Regions
faction in parliament, said that the reason the opposition is pushing for touch-sensitive voting, was because “someone wants to avoid responsibility for an
unlawful decision on this issue, and the money spent contrary to the law,” he
said. He added that the speaker’s office was given a facelift at the same time,
suggesting that money set aside for upgrading the system, was used for it.

Head of regulatory committee Volodymyr Makeyenko of
Party of Regions suggested upgrading the voting system instead, but did not
specify how much it would cost the taxpayers.

Opposition leaders also demanded to hear the
government’s report on Feb. 5 and plan of action. With the economy officially
in recession, opposition said people need to hear Prime Minister Mykola Azarov
first hand.

“First of all, we want the report on social and
economical matters. This year Ukraine is to pay almost $10 billion of debt. We
want to hear how this will influence the country’s economy and the Ukrainian
people,” said  Yatseniuk.

He also said a report is due on political persecutions
in the country. Serhiy Arbuzov,
first deputy prime minister who was present at the meeting, said government
representatives will come to parliament on Feb. 8: “We will be in Parliament,
and will answer all questions.”

Arbuzov added said the
government had prepared a number of draft laws “for  poor Ukrainians” which they will bring to the
parliament.

Kyiv Post staff writer
Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at
[email protected]