The Party of Regions will not vote until the Verkhovna Rada adds a draft law amnestying protesters in southeastern Ukraine to its agenda.
“We, the Party of Regions, declare that our party will not vote for a
single bill under consideration in the [parliament] until the amnesty
bill is put on the agenda,” Party of Regions deputy Volodymyr Bandurov
said at the morning session of the Verkhovna Rada on Thursday.
The Party of Regions also insists on an urgent constitutional reform,
which will decentralize power, grant broad budget autonomy to regions
and provide the status of a second state language to Russian, he said.
In addition, the party insists on setting up an ad hoc investigative
commission of the Verkhovna Rada to look into the “Maidan snipers” of
this February.
Meanwhile, the Verkhovna Rada registered on Thursday a draft law on
the elimination of negative consequences and the prevention of
prosecution and punishment of protesters in southeastern Ukraine. The
document is authored by Party of Regions deputies Dmytro Dobkin,
Volodymyr Medianyk, Yevhen Murayev and Nestor Shufrych.
The bill memo explains “the need for the adoption of this bill with
the search for ways to resolve the Ukrainian situation, in which
peaceful demonstrations held in the south and the east develop into mass
disturbances with the use of forbidden objects and violence, occupation
and paralysis of administrative buildings and transport communications
and impediments to their proper operation.”
“A possible way to normalize this situation is the exemption from
criminal liabilities and punishment of peaceful protesters on the counts
of crimes and administrative violations, which will guarantee their
non-prosecution in a future period and become an important factor in
stopping their illegal actions,” the memo runs.
The bill aims “to create a clear mechanism which, on one hand, will
exempt from criminal liabilities and punishment the individuals engaged
in mass protests since February 22 and, on the other hand, will settle
internal conflicts in the country and ensure uninterrupted operation of
the state authorities and local self-government bodies,” it says.
