You're reading: Groysman wants to legislate away violence in parliament

We must stop fighting in the Rada once and for all, because violence is a sign of weakness,” parliament speaker Volodymyr Groysman proclaimed during a session of the Verkhovna Rada on Nov. 24.

Easier said than done.

Ukrainian lawmakers have always been prone to seeing red. Vicious brawls regularly punctuate debates in Ukrainian parliament, and lately the number of fist fights has been increasing.

Parliament on Nov. 24 started with the reading of an official statement by Batkivshyna Party member of parliament Oleksandra Kuzhel, who is in the hospital with concussion. She is recovering from an incident on Nov. 5 during which Andriy Teteruk, a People’s Front lawmaker, hit her on the head with a water bottle.

Kuzhel’s colleague, Olena Shkrum, read her colleague’s statement to parliament. In it, Kuzhel claimed she had withdrawn her complaint against Teteruk from the General Prosecutor’s Office because she didn’t want to concentrate on the past and the prosecutors have more important matters.

After the latest violent incidents involving lawmakers, both inside and outside the parliament, Groysman at a conciliation board meeting on Nov. 23 even suggested passing a law forbidding fighting in parliament.

Groysman’s initiative comes just days after the latest violent act involving a member of parliament, in which former EuroMaidan Revolution activist and lawmaker Volodymyr Parasyuk kicked the head of Vasyl Pisny, the deputy head of the anti-corruption section of the Security Service of Ukraine in Lviv Oblast, during an anti-corruption committee meeting on Nov.19.

Vladyslav Kutsenko, a prosecutor, said there were four open criminal cases – on robbery, kidnapping and beating – in which Parasyuk is either a witness or a suspect. “The last one was opened against him when Pisny filed a complaint to the prosecutor – threatening and assaulting a law enforcement officer,” Kutsenko told Ukrainian television’s 112 TV channel.

In comments to the Kyiv Post on Nov. 24 in parliament, Parasyuk said he regretted that he had let his emotions get the better of him. But he doesn’t regret that he kicked Pisny, who is twice his age.

I was defending my dignity and the rules of law and justice in Ukraine. And I would do that again,” said Parasyuk.

Parasyuk lashed out, foot-first, when Pisny, who is suspected of corruption and even was arrested and fired from the Interior Ministry in the 1990s, said he had done more for EuroMaidan than Parasyuk.

Borys Filatov, a former lawmaker who is mayor of Dnipropetrovsk, told the Kyiv Post that using violence was not the way to resolve problems in parliament. But he also said he understood why it happens.

Sometimes, in a country where the law doesn’t work, it’s the only way to fight for justice. I don’t approve of it, but it was to be expected,” said Filatov.

If our legal system continues to work selectively or even stops working, we might soon have mob justice,” he said.

And Pylyp Illenko, a Svoboda Party lawmaker, thinks violence among members is the least of the problems facing Ukraine at the moment.

There are so many other violations in the Rada. Lawmakers vote over and over again on simple draft laws. Piano voting (in which an MP illegally votes on behalf of another MP) still remains rather popular among my colleagues. We don’t even have a regulation committee head, who would maintain order in Rada,” Illenko told the Kyiv Post.

Moreover, it looks like Parasyuk, Teteruk and perhaps other lawmakers in future might go unpunished for their violent behavior.

After the incident with Pisny, Parasyuk said he was prepared to be stripped of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution. But neither he nor his colleague Teteruk have had to face such a sanction as of now: Leonid Yemets, the deputy head of the judicial policy committee in the Rada and a People’s Front lawmaker, has told the Segodnya newspaper that the prosecutor has not sent any requests to parliament to strip the violence-prone MPs of their immunity.

Kyiv Post staff writer Veronika Melkozerova can be reached at [email protected]