MPs were supposed to vote on the amendments to the Constitution on February 3, but the elated mood which followed the end of the holiday period has sped things up. On the very first day of the 7th parliamentary session, February 1, deputies resolved to amend the Ukrainian Constitution. Hence, the next parliamentary elections will be held on the last week of October 2012, and the presidential elections will be held on the last week of March 2015. There were 310 deputies in favor of the changes. The
NU-NS accounted for 41 of the yeas, while 7 came from the BYUT.
“During Monday’s press conference I said that we would have 310 voices. See, I was right. 310 voices exactly,” Volodymyr Lytvyn boasted about his gift of foresight.
Party of Regions MPs were congratulating each other, hugging and shaking hands in the lobby… “Two more years to work!”, Vladyslav Lukianov joyfully shouted to The Day’s reporter. The opposition did not appear to be too upset. In fact, the result of the vote was quite predictable. We remind our readers that on November 19, 2010, when the parliament proceeded to an advance vote on the amendments, 305 deputies supported the motion.
“Once again it was the bought votes that made the difference,” Taras Stestkiv expressed his indignation. “By the way, the part of Our Ukraine [part of the NU-NS bloc. – Ed.] that had sworn not to vote, backtracked on its promise. In my opinion, on the one hand this is [the result of] direct bribery and pressure, and on the other hand, some of the deputies just lost their nerve when they thought that they would have to participate in the elections in March. This is what our deputies’ corps has come to.”
Just after the vote the seven deputies from the Batkivshchyna party who voted for the amendments were excluded. They are: Oleh Babaiev, Ruslan Bohdan, Anatolii Semynoha, Ivan Kurovsky, Pavlo Movchan, Viktor Pavlenko, and Anton Yatsenko.
“It was a political decision [based on a matter] of principle, both for the group and the party, as the people who don’t obey the party’s discipline have to answer,” explained Serhii Vlasenko, a BYUT member. Asked about whether or not the people in the party knew about the voting intentions, Vlasenko said that “such things are never paraded, but we had the information about it. There aren’t many of them, but several names on this list surprised me a lot, notably Pavlo Movchan and Anatolii Semynoha.”
It should be noted that Movchan managed to prolong his term in office and be expelled from the party from his hospital bed. He said via phone in his comment to Hlavkom. “I can’t speak, I didn’t vote, I’m in the hospital now, there’s a doctor near me.”
One more BYUT member, Dmytro Vetvytsky, applied to leave the BYUT and Batkivshchyna. Immediately after he became a leader of the new political movement Pravda.
“I’m full of enthusiasm and ideas, and I believe that the life of our country and of each individual Ukrainian can change… That is why I decided to leave the parliamentary group of BYUT and to lead the new political movement Pravda,” he said in his official statement.
This little-known deputy is considered to be very close to Yulia Tymoshenko and has worked with her the longest. He was the CEO of the Ukrainian United Energetic Systems and is Tymoshenko’s daughter’s godfather. The reasons behind the move are probably his ambitions and excessive independence. They say that the last drop was his initiative to change the lyrics in the first verse of the national anthem.
In any case, BYUT-Batkivshchyna has only 106 deputies left.
