Riot in Rada over adoption of impeachment law
The Verkhovna Rada quickly adopted as a basis and immediately in general the law introduced by Vladimir Zelensky “On a special procedure for removing the President of Ukraine from office,” which formally regulates the impeachment process, but does not work in practice.
This decision was made during the next plenary meeting, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to the head of the Committee on the Organization of State Power, deputy from the Servant of the People faction Andrei Klochko, who presented the bill, the document “enshrines the democratic principles of impeachment” and also “describes the procedure for forming a Special Temporary Investigative Commission.”
However, the former speaker of parliament, member of the European Solidarity party, Andriy Parubiy, noted that the impeachment law has already been adopted, but President Vladimir Zelensky has not yet signed it.
“Therefore, we don’t need legislative spam and the appearance of a lot of work; we need two minutes for the president to sign Law 1098 and in two minutes the country will have an impeachment law,” Parubiy said.
The “Voice” party of Svyatoslav Vakarchuk also spoke out against the adoption of this law.
“Perhaps the president was deceived, because this bill changes absolutely nothing. This is not a bill, it is a collection that includes articles of the Constitution and individual provisions of the regulations. This is just a facade reform that does not change anything. In order for us to make the impeachment procedure possible, we need changes to Article 111 of the Constitution. Only then will impeachment be actually possible,” explained Roman Lozinsky, a deputy from Golos.
In turn, Nestor Shufrich, a member of the Oppoplatform - For Life, said that this is a rare case when he agrees with Poroshenko’s representatives, since the previously adopted law on investigative commissions is quite sufficient.
However, despite the arguments of political opponents, the presidential majority decided to accept the proposed law as a basis: 337 out of 407 deputies were in favor.
After this, Speaker Dmitry Razumkov immediately announced that the law would be put to a final vote, which was met with indignant exclamations in the hall.
When asked to comment on the situation, Andrei Klochko, a representative of the relevant committee and co-rapporteur on the bill, said that all comments were considered by the committee, and “those that were worth attention were taken into account,” so the committee recommends the law for adoption.
However, deputy from “Batkivshchyna” Ivan Krulko reminded the speaker that according to the regulations, in the event of at least one objection from deputies in the session hall, the law should be considered only in two readings, which was immediately ignored by Dmitry Razumkov, who put the question of recognition to a vote this bill did not require modifications, after which the Servant of the People party again voted in full force, without receiving support from any of the factions.
Former vice-speaker Irina Gerashchenko was outraged by this, accusing the majority of violating the regulations.
“You are now simply humiliating the very role of parliament, crossing out the right of every deputy to submit amendments. If today you accept all other amendments like this, then we appeal to the Ukrainians: parliament does not exist, it is not just a green printer and a green copier, but these are just attachments to a green button and microphone,” Gerashchenko shouted from the podium.
In response, Servant of the People representative Daniil Getmantsev only thanked the new opposition for the fact that they “finally began to respect the regulations and for some reason forgot about the violations that were systematically committed throughout the entire tenure of the last Verkhovna Rada,” which was met with applause from deputies ruling party.
However, despite the protests, Speaker Dmitry Razumkov put to a vote the decision on the final adoption of the impeachment law.
As a result, the law was adopted, since all 245 deputies of the Servant of the People and one non-factional people’s deputy voted in favor, while the rest of the parties refused to support this decision.
After the vote, at the request of the two factions, a break was announced, during which European Solidarity deputy Victoria Syumar made a statement with the forecast that in the end there would only be one faction left in the session hall, which would stamp laws.
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