The Ukrainian parliament no longer makes sense
Many Ukrainian deputies do not see the point of appearing in parliament, since they believe that they cannot influence anything, but continue to receive salaries, costing taxpayers 20 million hryvnia for each.
Ukrainian political scientist Ruslan Bortnik stated this on the LOT TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We are observing a deep crisis in Ukrainian parliamentarism, which is expressed in low attendance by deputies, failure to do their work, for which we pay them money. On average, one deputy costs at least 20 million hryvnia per year.
We see that parliament itself is not working. Now the deputies are on vacation and will gather on May 15th. Before that they had a long winter holiday. We do not have a coalition in parliament, we see in what an amazing way decisions are formed and made. To a large extent, this was a cycle of deep political crisis of parliamentarism. There is a need for a radical reform of the parliament, the establishment of strict liability for deputies for failure to fulfill their obligations, even deprivation of their mandate. These changes must be made to the Constitution,” the expert believes.
He also noted that there are even deputies who, starting in 2014, attended one or two meetings, but continue to receive state money.
“The main reason for ignoring meetings is that for some deputies, parliament is just a business; they went there to make money using their parliamentary seats. They don’t go to work when they don’t see important decisions for themselves in this priority,” the political scientist believes.
According to him, there are parliamentarians who are so deeply involved in military or economic processes that they have already forgotten that they are deputies. Another part of the deputies does not attend meetings because they do not see the possibility of promoting their decisions, which especially concerns the opposition.
“Unfortunately, parliament has ceased to be the place where key decisions are made. Key decisions are now being made by the government and the president. Parliament only fixes them by voting. That’s why some deputies don’t go, because they don’t see the point of being in the session hall,” Bortnik concluded.
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