Seven members of the 20-member Voice parliamentary faction quit on July 29 accusing the party leadership of power usurpation.
The lawmakers moved to exit the faction following months of infighting.
Among the lawmakers who walked out of the faction were Oleksandra Ustinova, Roman Lozynskiy, Volodymyr Tsybal, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, Solomiia Bobrovska, Yulia Klymenko, and Olga Stefanyshyna.
“Please exclude me from the members of the Voice political party,” Stefanyshyna wrote on Facebook attaching a photograph of her resignation letter, “The most outstanding deals are made on napkins, but this deal can be made only on toilet paper.”
The news of the lawmakers’ exit broke on the day of the Voice’s congress in Kyiv. They condemned party leadership for obstructing disloyal Voice members from participating in the meeting.
The list of participants was formed based on the “loyalty to the leadership,” the joint statement of the seven lawmakers reads.
“Unfortunately, the leadership represented by Kira Rudyk and the political council of the Voice controlled by her artificially created conditions under which 75% of party members and local deputies will not be represented at the congress,” the statement goes on. “Voice no longer exists as a party.”
Voice reacted, saying: “Recent events have proved that working together on building the party is impossible indeed.”
“We want to highlight that we do not have any fundamental ideological disagreements with our colleagues and we are sure that they understand that as lawmakers elected they must continue implementing the program of the Voice party, which brought us victory at elections,” the statement reads.
On June 16, half of the party’s 20 lawmakers broke away, creating an unofficial parliamentary group called Justice (Spravedlyvist). They did it out of distrust to Rudik and Yaroslav Zheleznyak, Voice’s parliamentary faction leader.
They demanded Rudik out from the party for missing over 60% of parliamentary sessions and accused her of usurping control over Voice.
86% of the Voice members present at today’s party congress expressed support for Rudik, according to Voice’s press service.
