New President Volodymyr Zelenskiy started his relationship with parliament by announcing in his inauguration speech that he would dissolve it.
Two days later, the lawmakers paid him back in full, refusing to vote for changes to electoral law proposed by the president. If passed, that law would have abolished single-member electoral districts and lowered the entry barrier for parliament to three percent of the vote instead of the current five percent.
Zelenskiy’s representative in parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, said that the president and the leaders of parliament’s factions had reached an agreement to pass these election amendments during a meeting on May 21. But, on May 22, the lawmakers even failed to place the draft law with the electoral changes on parliament’s agenda.
“This compromise agreement was reached yesterday, but it was violated,” Stefanchuk told journalists with embarrassment after the vote. He added that Zelenskiy has several “other options” and would likely hold “other consultations.” However, Stefanchuk did not indicate when and with whom.
“For now, the negotiations don’t work,” he said.
Vitaly Khomutynnik, leader of the 25-member Vidrodzhennia (Revival) party faction, and Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the 20-member Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) faction, also told journalists on May 21 that the electoral changes were discussed at the meeting with Zelenskiy.
While Tymoshenko and most of her faction supported the electoral amendment, most of the other lawmakers who spoke in parliament claimed that they do not go far enough and that the next elections should be held using open party lists.
“There is no difference between buying a spot (in parliament) in a single-member district and buying a place on the party list,” said Oleksandr Chernenko, a lawmaker from former president Petro Poroshenko’s 135-member party faction.
“This is the same political corruption.”
Under current legislation, half of the parliament’s 450 lawmakers are elected from single-member districts. That allows many to win election by bribing voters.
The rest of the parliament is formed using the closed party list system, in which parties have to reveal only the top five names on their lists to voters. That allows them to bring publicly unpopular but rich and powerful party sponsors, who are hidden below the list’s fifth position, into parliament.
While these problems are well known, lawmakers have done little to change them during the 4.5 years they have been in parliament.
In November 2017, parliament passed a new electoral code in its first reading with the minimum required 226 votes. This bill envisaged parliamentary elections with open lists. However, lawmakers have yet to pass it in a second reading with roughly 4,000 proposed amendments.
Chernenko, who is a former election observer and co-sponsor of the electoral code, offered lawmakers to pass the electoral code in the second reading next week, but they showed no enthusiasm.
Oksana Syroyid, deputy speaker of parliament, told journalists after the vote that the lawmakers had a chance to “liquidate half of the evil” by voting for Zelenskiy’s draft law. They failed to do that, she said, likely because of the vested interests of many influential politicians, who plan to get into the new parliament through single-member districts.
Zelenskiy ordered that snap parliamentary elections be held on July 21.
However, lawmakers will challenge the decision on dissolving parliament in the Constitutional Court, Andriy Parubiy, speaker of the parliament, announced on May 22.
