With many pro-European politicians winning seats in parliament, some 64 former lawmakers who supported so callled "dictator laws" during the waning days of deposed president Viktor Yanukovych, are making it to parliament again.
The majority of them are former Party of
Regions lawmakers who got re-elected in single-mandate districts in Kharkiv,
Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and Cherkasy oblasts including one nominated by President Petro Poroshenko’s bloc in
Chernihiv Oblast, while ten are coming back on the party list of Opposition Bloc, which received more than 9 percent support.
Yulia Lyovochkina, the sister of Serhiy Lyovochkin, the former chief of staff for Yanukovych, oligarch Vadym Novynsky, head of parliament’s health
committee Tetyana Bakhteyeva, are among supporters of ‘dictator laws’
re-elected on party list of Opposition Bloc. Meanwhile, in single-mandate
constituencies multi-millionaire Serhiy Klyuyev, former parliament speaker
Volodymyr Lytvyn, former governor of Chernihiv Oblast Vladyslav Atroshenko and
others are making it to the parliament.
Vladyslav Atroshenko, former member of the
Party of Regions faction, who was re-elected in a single mandate district in
Chernihiv with the support of Poroshenko’s bloc recalled that Jan.16
vote took place after the urgent adoption of a state budget and was held under
pressure.
“I regret that, though it was not my fault, I
faced some losses to my image,” Atroshenko said. “But under those circumstances
and with that motivation, I voted frankly considering that it would defuse
situation on Maidan. If the situation was different, if I predicted that it
would embitter Maidan and cause casualties, never in my life would I have
voted.”
Atroshenko later withdrew his vote as well as
some other members of parliament and submitted a draft law to cancel Jan. 16 bills.
Bakhteyeva is also mentioned on parliament’s
website among those who voted for Jan. 16 laws, but she denies it.
“That day a scuffle started in the hall almost
from the very beginning and a representative of Batkivshchyna, Yuriy Voznyuk, smashed head of the member of parliament Volodymyr Malyshev. As a doctor I immediately provided first aid to Malyshev and accompanied him to the hospital. So I physically was not present during the
vote,” Bakhteyeva told the Kyiv Post in the email.
This confusion might be a result of a widespread practice in Ukraine when members of parliament vote with the cards of
their absent colleagues which is illegal. They also often do not read the text
of laws they vote for, so cases similar to Jan.16 voting can happen again.
“The parliamentary procedure has been violated
150-200 times already after Maidan,” Atroshenko said. “We need to draw conclusions for the future,
to prevent this happen again.”
On Oct.27, an adviser to Interior Minister Anton
Herashchenko announced on Hromadske TV that the General Prosecutor’s Office might
ask the parliament to strip supporters of ‘dictator” laws’ off their immunity.
So far, the criminal probe on the fact of rigged vote count is opened only
against former Party of Regions deputies Ihor Kaletnik, the then first deputy
speaker of parliament, and Volodymyr Oliynyk. Oliynyk did not run this time.
Kaletnik was nominated in Donetsk district 41 controlled by Russia-backed
separatists where elections didn’t happen.
The current electoral system, which determines
election of half of the parliament through party lists and half through
single-mandate constituencies enabled re-election of many former Party of
Regions lawmakers, according to Viktor Taran, analyst with the Center for
Political Studies and Analytics.
Its experts compiled a list of 64 deputies who supported “dictator laws” and are
re-elected.
“The majority of these deputies had a chance to come back to parliament only through single-mandate districts, which
they have been feeding (voters) with buckwheat and money during the last few
weeks,” Taran said. “Fighting this corrupt scheme in difficult social
and economic conditions is possible only by switching to the system with open
party lists and it’s a challenge which newly-elected parliament should
take.”
Local and international election observers
also have recommended switching to a system with open party lists which can help
avoid many election violations, which remain common at single-mandate
onstituencies.
“The major confrontation remains in
single-mandate constituencies,” Olga Aivazovska, head of local election
watchdog OPORA said on Oct.27 during watchdog’s press-conference. “However,
this precedent was laid in the current electoral system. It should be solved by
adopting changes (to the law) on the electoral system,” she said.
A list of members of parliament who
voted for Jan. 16 laws and were re-elected on Oct. 26.
Former members of the Party of Regions
parliamentary faction
Oleksandr Bilovol
Anatoliy Denysenko
Dmytro Dobkin
Anatoliy Hirshfeld
Volodymyr Katsuba
Volodymyr Mysyk
Yevheniy Murayev
Viktor Ostapchuk
Valeriy Pysarenko
Dmytro Svyatash
Oleksandr Feldman
Vitaliy Khomutynnik
Dmytro Shentsev
Yevheniy Hyeller
Serhiy Klyuyev
Yukhym Zvyahilskiy
Serhiy Matviyenkov
Ihor Shkirya
Denys Omelyanovych
Yakiv Bezbakh
Artur Martovytskiy
Kostyantyn Pavlov
Andriy Shypko
Dmytro Shpenov
Yavhen Balytskiy
Vyacheslav Bohuslayev
Oleksandr Ponomaryov
Serhiy Kivalov
Anton Kisse
Leonid Klimov
Ivan Fursin
Vitaliy Barvinenko
Volodymyr Zubyk
Hennadiy Bobov
Valentyn Nechyporenko
Anton Yatsenko
Ilyuk Artem
Vladyslav Atroshenko
Serhiy Dunayev
Yuliy Ioffe
Viktor Razvadovskiy
Yaroslav Moskalenko
Mykhaylo Lanyo
Andriy Derkach
Ihor Molotok
Viktor Bondar
Oleksandr Hereha
Oleh Kulinich
Oleksiy Biliy
Nestor Shufrych
Tetiana Bakhteyeva
Vadym Novynskiy
Yuriy Voropayev
Yuliya Lyovochkina
Ivan Myrniy
Yuriy Miroshnychenko
Oleksandr Dovzhenkov
Oleksandr Nechayev
Non-affiliated, later members of Sovereign
European Ukraine parliamentary group
Volodymyr Lytvyn
Serhiy Labazyuk
Ihor Yeremeyev
Stepan Ivakhiv
Serhiy Martynyak
Mykhaylo Poplavskiy
