Rock singer and former leader of 20-member Golos (Voice) faction Svyatoslav Vakarchuk stepped down as lawmaker in the Verkhovna Rada on June 11.
During the announcement in Kyiv’s Mariinsky Park, in front of the Ukrainian parliament, Vakarchuk said his goal of bringing new faces to the parliament was fulfilled, and that he wants to focus on an unspecified educational project targeting young leaders. He will presumably continue his music career as a frontman of the popular rock band Okean Elzy.
However, Vakarchuk remains a member of the party he founded and wants to stay in politics.
“I’m quitting the parliament but it doesn’t mean I’m quitting politics,” he said.
The announcement brought a sense of deja vu for many in Ukraine.
It is the second time Vakarchuk quits the Verkhovna Rada. The first time he stepped down was in 2008, after nine months as a lawmaker for the party of then-President Viktor Yushchenko. Back then, Vakarchuk said he was quitting over “disillusionment.”
On his second try at the parliament, Vakarchuk lasted about a week less than the first time.
But this time, Vakarchuk’s decision to quit bears more consequences. He leaves behind a 20-member party faction that entered the parliament largely thanks to the power of Vakarchuk’s personal brand as one of Ukraine’s most famous celebrities.
During his nine-month streak as a lawmaker, Vakarchuk showed up for 75 meetings of the parliament, and missed 23 of them.
Vakarchuk remains a lawmaker until the parliament votes on his resignation. The last time, it took nearly three months for the parliament to fire Vakarchuk. During this time, he stopped coming to the meetings.
The singer had already stepped down as leader of his party Golos on March 11. Kira Rudyk, who used to be the CEO of Ring Ukraine, a smart-home company owned by Amazon, took his place.
Vakarchuk created the Golos party in May 2019 to participate in early parliamentary elections in July, as an alternative to other parties in place such as President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, former President Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland and the pro-Russian party Opposition Platform.
Vakarchuk had announced in May 2019 that he would run for the Ukrainian parliament from the newly formed party Golos.
The party finished with 5.82% of the vote in the 2019 parliamentary election, and won three single-constituency races, gaining 20 seats out of 423. Ukrainian parliament legally has 450 seats, but the seats allocated for Russia-annexed Crimea and the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine remain vacant since 2014.
Vakarchuk has been outspoken on political issues in Ukraine for years. In 2018, his public speeches and statements on reforms prompted rumors that he would run for president in 2019, but he didn’t.
Before the official start of the campaign, he was viewed as one of the potential candidates in opinion polls and at some point ranked higher than comedic actor Zelensky, who eventually was elected president.
