In recent days, a real boom in suspicions of corrupt deputies has been recorded in Ukraine. Deputy Anatoly Gunko was expelled from the Servant of the People faction, whom the investigation exposed for large-scale bribery.
It turned out that the deputy assisted in the transfer of state land to the entrepreneur for cultivation - he was caught red-handed while receiving the first tranche of “remuneration” in the amount of 85 thousand dollars. The former people's deputy from the Party of Regions, Vladimir Makeenko, was also visited during searches. Do these cases indicate the beginning of an anti-corruption chapter in the life of Ukraine, what other reason may lie in these processes and how the deprivation of mandates will affect the functioning of parliament? - Oleg Sahakyan, a political scientist and head of the “Unified Coordination Center” platform, told Apostrophe TV.
A demand for justice arose in society. We see that there are certain psychological dynamics in how society experiences stress. And it is now superimposed on the context that we see. Accordingly, all these stories with military commissars, with bribes and the like provoke and trigger society. Therefore, the level of demand for justice and the lack of this justice in the legal and social sense has risen. The authorities react to this. Therefore, we see that, obviously, there is a political will to go through the military commissars in order to go through the “top fish,” let’s say. Catch, show, at a minimum, in order to demonstrate to society that the authorities see and hear this request.
Why deputies? There is a second factor here. You can see how the Servants of the People began to lose their votes, and lately it has become increasingly difficult to collect them. And the demarche that came from the committee to remove the Minister of Culture and Information (Alexander Tkachenko - “Apostrophe”) was extremely revealing. We saw how the speaker came out with the words that the Constitution does not prohibit holding elections during a war, reminding deputies that if the parliament does not function, then the authorities in the person of the Office of the President are ready to reboot it. They understand that most of them will not get into parliament again. Accordingly, for them this window remains, which they would not like to lose.
By the way, this provokes some of them to vomit, because they understand that it’s like the last day before Pompeii. Therefore, we have now taken on the deputies, and first of all, the deputies of the Servant of the People. This is one of the tools to unite, clean up a little those who have gone too far and ensure party discipline. That is, in other words, in this case we are not talking about systemic anti-corruption, but about the political motivation of such steps and “weeding the garden” with the help of law enforcement agencies.
Searches at Makeenko's
It is obvious that they are trying to go through deputies of different factions, different orientations, so as not to say that there is some kind of selectivity. According to Makeenko, the matter is really old. It is clear that you can always find certain political implications in it regarding Makeenko’s connections with Poroshenko around the “Direct” TV channel. Accordingly, when the authorities hit Makeenko in 2019, it was persecution precisely because of these connections. On the other hand, let's let the investigators do their work and see how much evidence there is of what is being incriminated.
In any case, in Ukraine the principle is now being demonstrated that deputies are not inviolable, and law enforcement agencies can work on them and can hold them accountable. If earlier it was a precedent for the entire term when immunity was lifted from at least one deputy and someone was brought to justice, now we see that this is already a definite systemic process. Another thing is that I would really like to call it truly anti-corruption, but first of all I see political motives in this. Even the most honest justice, if it is selective, is subordinated to dishonest goals, and it cannot be fair.
Work of the Rada
As long as there are 300 deputies in parliament, it is functional. Hypothetically, it can meet and make a decision with a constitutional majority. Therefore, until this moment it is impossible to say that parliament has lost its capacity. Accordingly, restarting parliament is also impossible. A restart means only elections, and it is impossible to hold effective elections during a war.
Regarding the deprivation of the mandate of majoritarians. Yes, we had such a situation in the territories that were front-line, in the gray zone, not to mention the occupied territories. We had a shortage of majoritarian voters, because it was impossible to hold these elections in the occupied territories. We have never elected more than 20 deputies. Therefore, there is no good answer here, these will simply be “vacuum” places. Accordingly, the weight of other deputies and their votes will increase proportionally.
During martial law, elections are not held. Accordingly, they cannot be carried out locally either, because martial law has been introduced throughout Ukraine. Then you need to introduce it in all areas around one, and this will be a very dubious norm. The courts will cancel it, they will reach the Constitutional Court, and it will still rule that if martial law is introduced somewhere in the country, this will already distort the electoral situation. Accordingly, elections held in this way will be quasi-elections, which will be poorly recognized both in the community itself where they will be held, and in Ukrainian society, and abroad.
