Last fall, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court made a decision on the claim of Vadim Rabinovich against the OPZZh party. The ex-people's deputy demanded to admit that his associates - Tatyana Plachkova, Igor Abramovich, Vadim Stolar - were illegally deprived of their mandates at the party congress in March 2022.
In its decision, the Grand Chamber noted that after the party congress, which decided to deprive the mandates of those whom the party on the list brought to power, the mandates are lost immediately.
Parliament should not vote on this.
Rabinovich’s claim was denied because “there is no justification for the negative impact of the party congress and the decisions made at it on specific real, individually expressed rights, freedoms or interests of the plaintiff, and not certain people’s deputies of Ukraine, whose early termination of powers was actually related to the decision of the party congress.” .
That is, the Supreme Court assessed the evidence and recognized that the party congress took place and Plachkova, Abramovich and Stolar were recalled.
Since then, they have managed to ban OPZH, but the matter has not been resolved with the mandates of people’s deputies. Stolar is still suing to determine that the convention had no legal force. At the end of 2023, the Supreme Court decided to transfer the case to the Kyiv District Administrative Court.
After a full-scale invasion, people's deputies of the OPZZh fled from the faction - they wrote official statements. According to the law, leaving a faction gives the party the right to recall such people's deputies.
And at the OPZZH congress, three people’s deputies were deprived of their mandates: Igor Abramovich, Tatyana Plachkova and Vadim Stolar. This happened on March 17, 2022. The next day, the Verkhovna Rada received the relevant documents from the party, as noted by the decision of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court.
Excerpt from the Supreme Court decision
After this, Vadim Rabinovich, who was the co-chairman of this pro-Russian political project, filed a lawsuit against the OPZZh party and asked to declare the party congress invalid due to violations of procedural issues.
Rabinovich argued that in order to hold the congress, the presence of two co-chairs is needed - him and People’s Deputy Yuri Boyko. And Rabinovich left Ukraine even before the start of the full-scale invasion.
“We always talked about peace. The party was built as a party of peace! But now there is no peace! The party has been terminated!” – Rabinovich stated then in 2022.
By the way, he has already lost his mandate because he was deprived of citizenship - and the Verkhovna Rada voted for this. Moreover, six months ago he was accused of treason.
Meanwhile, the court continued to consider Rabinovich's claim, which reached the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court. And given the fact that information about the ban on lifelong lifestyles has been known to everyone since 2022, the decision of the Grand Chamber at the end of 2023 in this case did not attract due attention from either parliament or the media, although the text of this decision is very important.
The Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court drew attention to the fact that Rabinovich did not have the right to file such a claim at all, since he did not represent the interests of either Plachkova, Abramovich, or Stolar. His arguments were called “abstract”.
But there is a very important point in the text of the resolution that you should pay attention to:
“Within the meaning of part two of Article 81 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the powers of a people’s deputy of Ukraine are terminated early in the event of:... the exit of a people’s deputy of Ukraine from the parliamentary faction of a political party (clause 6)... Within the meaning of part six of this article, in the event of a people’s deputy of Ukraine leaving the parliamentary faction political party, his powers are terminated early on the basis of law by decision of the highest governing body of the relevant political party from the date of such decision.”
That is, the judges of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court noted that when a deputy leaves a faction, his powers are terminated by the decision of the governing body of the party from the date of its adoption. Consequently, there is no need for a decision of the Verkhovna Rada or a statement from a people’s deputy, for which the parliament then votes.
Abramovich a year ago, and Plachkova lost their mandates at the end of July 2023. This happened only after they themselves wrote statements and parliament voted for it.
February 24, 2024, exactly two years since a full-scale war began - Stolar, who was recalled by the party congress, still remains a people's deputy, sometimes comes to the session hall and votes.
The law gave parties the opportunity to recall those who left the political faction in the Verkhovna Rada. A similar procedure applies to deputies of local councils. Such mechanisms were introduced to minimize the impact of buying up deputies after election. Deputies who transferred to another political force after the elections were previously called “carcasses.”
If an opposition MP decided to join the majority, it would never support his recall, because they need him as a “+1 vote.” Therefore, here the legislators did not foresee the decision of the council for deprivation of the mandate.
A similar mechanism operates at the local level. At the end of 2023, “Servant of the People” recalled the deputies of the Kyiv Regional Council, who were “canned food” of the now-defended people’s deputy Alexander Dubinsky, who is accused of high treason. They lost their mandates immediately after the party congress, and no one here expected them to write voluntary statements, like Plachkova or Abramovich, or for the decision of the Kyiv Regional Council.
“Within the meaning of part six of Article 81 of the Constitution of Ukraine, in the event of a people’s deputy of Ukraine leaving the parliamentary faction of a political party, his powers are terminated early on the basis of the law by decision of the highest governing body of the relevant political party from the date of such decision. This is a norm of the Constitution of Ukraine and the decision of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court only confirmed this. Based on the facts established by the Supreme Court, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine knew as early as March 18, 2022 that the powers of these deputies had been terminated - and from that moment on, the apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine should not have accrued wages to them and their assistants, taken them into account during voting, etc. .d.”, says lawyer Roman Tytykalo, deputy of the Kyiv Regional Council (EC).
After the congress, Stolar can visit parliament whenever he wants and can participate in voting. Before being detained by law enforcement officers, the odious Nestor Shufrich headed the Committee on Freedom of Speech, and when the media asked Deputy Speaker Alexander Kornienko why the parliament did not change the head of the committee, Kornienko replied that he was waiting for “Nestor Ivanovich” to leave himself. And here, in contrast, we can remember how the Verkhovna Rada unlawfully removed two people’s deputies from meetings of the Verkhovna Rada - Geo Leros and Galina Tretyakova. Such a tool was not used against any people’s deputy from the former OPZZH.
Stolar disputed that the congress had deprived him of his powers in the Supreme Court, but from there the parliamentarian was sent to the District Court, which closed the proceedings. And now the appeal is reviewing the decision to close the proceedings. This is how they waste time.
“The situation is ambiguous, making possible different opinions and manipulation. However, in my opinion, from the day the decision was made on the early termination of powers by the party congress, Stolar is not a people’s deputy. On September 21, 2023, this position was not changed by the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court. December 27, 2023 not changed by the Kyiv District Administrative Court. With a high probability, the ruling of the Kyiv District Administrative Court will be left unchanged, and the complaint will not be satisfied. After which the right to cassation review will be exercised. The presence of a long-term legal dispute simultaneously provides formal and substantive reasons to insist on the need to wait for a final decision in the case of Mr. Stolar’s claim,” says Dmitry Terletsky, lawyer and candidate of legal sciences.
Indeed, the red tape in the Stolar case continues for the second year. And although during this time the courts managed to ban almost 20 pro-Russian parties, they could not make a decision on one people’s deputy.
And there are possible motives here. The mono-majority needs the votes of ex-OPPL. The “servants” themselves admitted that there was “constructive” cooperation between them. This may be one of the reasons why the issue of life safety is being resolved so slowly. When scandalous bills pass through the session hall with a minimum number of votes, representatives of the now banned party can save the situation. And one of Plachkova’s votes in 2022 confirms this.
People's Deputy Yulia Klimenko (“Voice”) notes that the people’s deputies from the ex-OPZZH have become significantly stronger over these two years:
“They not only did not disappear from the Ukrainian parliament, but also strengthened their positions, dividing into two groups, which now have two votes at the conciliation council and also participate in secret meetings, and two groups of OPZZH now have blocking votes in parliament , on which the “servants” depend.”
While a people's deputy is officially registered in the Verkhovna Rada, he and his assistants can receive budget funds.
To find out how much money these three politicians and their assistants received, the public initiative “Golka” turned to Yulia Klymenko at the beginning of the year, and she sent a deputy appeal to the Verkhovna Rada Office.
There is no answer from the Office yet to questions regarding budget funds. The deputy was essentially given an unsubscribe and noted that in the text of her deputy address they saw “signs of... a deputy request.” What is the difference between a deputy's appeal and a deputy's request - a people's deputy can submit an appeal himself, and the Verkhovna Rada votes for the request.
The public initiative “Golka” submitted these questions to the Verkhovna Rada not only by email, but also through the “Access to Truth” service. The machine took a break of 20 working days to prepare this information.
While data collection was underway, Stolar's declaration appeared. In 2022, he received slightly less than UAH 40,000. Plachkova filed a declaration for 2022 and indicated almost 270,000 in income, and when she handed over her mandate, she declared almost 150,000 in salary to the Verkhovna Rada.
But the budget funds that the people’s deputies of the former OPZZH receive are far from being the key problem. After 10 years of war, we still have not formed a state policy to protect national security from pro-Russian influence.
Parliament is just preparing to consider in the second reading a government bill (8371), which should ban the activities of the “FSB in cassocks” (the so-called Moscow Patriarchate).
But for more than a year, another government bill (7476), the purpose of which is to cleanse local government of deputies of banned parties, has not reached the session hall.
And this despite the fact that he received the support of the relevant committee, and Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk received an appeal with the signatures of more than 150 people’s deputies who demand that the Cabinet’s initiative be included in the agenda.
By the way, voters cannot even recall deputies from banned parties. The final decision on the deprivation of mandates of deputies of local parties is made by the party, and pro-Russian parties are banned and cannot hold congresses.
Therefore, unlike all other deputies of local councils, deputies of banned parties became inviolable for voters. And with this reality we are entering the 11th year of the war with the aggressor state.
