Some 133 lawmakers who voted to curb free speech and free assembly in a failed bid to keep President Viktor Yanukovych in power are on the ballot for the Oct. 26 election, an election watchdog says.
Their passage with 106 additional deputies of the Jan. 16 “dictator laws” had the opposite effect: an enraged public responded by intensifying the EuroMaidan protests that led to Yanukovych’s downfall when he fled the country on Feb. 22, abandoning his corruption-soaked presidency. He remains a fugitive hiding in Russia from charges of murdering more than 100 protesters as well as stealing billions of dollars.
The draconian laws were supported by most members of the former Party of Regions, Communists and non-affiliated lawmakers who often voted with the ruling majority under Yanukovych.
Most lawmakers had not even seen the bill’s text before the vote. They voted by simply raising their hands with 239 voters counted in favor of the law.
Voting yea included former central election commission head Serhiy Kivalov; former Emergency Minister Nestor Shufrych; and Yanukovych’s representative in parliament Ihor Miroshnychenko.
Others who voted in favor are Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, Strong Ukraine party leader Sergiy Tigipko, former speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Volyn businessman Ihor Yeremeyev.
Election watchdog Chesno counted that 133 out of 239 lawmakers who voted for the anti-democratic laws are running for re-election.
Most of them – 94– are running in single-mandate districts, primarily in eastern Ukraine, including one candidate nominated by the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko.
The rest are running on party lists: 15 from the Oppositional Bloc consisting mostly of former Party of Regions members; 13 from the Communist Party and 11 from Sergiy Tigipko’s Strong Ukraine.
Names and pictures of the deputies who voted for the Jan. 16 laws can be also found at http://16-go.wtf website together with an appeal “You don’t have a right to choose them!”
Many think that those deputies don’t have a moral right to get re-elected.
“Those who raised their hands for dictatorship don’t exist for me anymore. I don’t want to see them in the next parliament,” said Zurab Alasania, general director of Ukraine’s National Broadcasting Company, cited by Chesno’s website.
The notorious package of bills were submitted by Party of Regions deputies Vadym Kolesnichenko and Volodymyr Oliynyk. Its unremarkable title related to the judicial system and status of judges, and security of citizens. But inside there were repressive norms that obliged news agencies to obtain a state license, limited access to the Internet, introduced criminal punishment for libel, among others.
One rediculous norm banned participation in peaceful rallies while wearing a mask or helmet. At the next rally people took to the streets in Kyiv wearing children’s holiday masks and kitchen pots in protest. Others headed to the parliament building along Hrushevskoho Street where they clashed with police blocking their way. The violent confrontation lasted several days and led to the first deaths among protesters.
Right after the shamefull vote several deputies withhdrew their votes. Among them was Vladyslav Atroshenko, a member of the Party of Region faction now running for re-election in a Chernihiv district with the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko.
“Those laws were put to the agenda unexpectedly, nobody had considered them, and in fact it was a fraud by managers who shaped the agenda,” Atroshenko was quoted by his web site as saying a few days after the vote. “I put no signatures under those draft laws anywhere.”
On the day of sniper shootings in late February, he left the Party of Regions faction and took part in a decisive vote to condemn the use of violence against the protesters.
Most of the measures were later revoked, yet most deputies never apologized for the shameful vote.
To keep the disgraced deputies from re-election, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk’s People’s Front withdrew 12 candidates in single-mandate constituencies in favor of stronger candidates. Batkivshchyna party removed seven and Petro Poroshenko’s bloc two.
“This is a principal question, because this vote…led to bloody casualties,” said Andriy Pavlovskiy, a lawmaker from Batkivshchyna running on the party list. “It led to the death of the Heavenly Hundred, and then…became a prologue of the war unleashed against our country by (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. All of these things are connected. In fact these people are traitors to our state.”
Oksana Lyachynska is a Kyiv Post staff writer.
