The Committee of Voters of Ukraine analyzed the participation of People's Deputies in the Verkhovna Rada's votes in the first hour of the parliament's work (August 29, 2019-August 29, 2020). This is reported on the organization's website.
Thus, according to the KIU, eight people's deputies of Ukraine missed 90% of the votes cast.
Vadym Stolar (a member of the "Opposition Platform — For Life" faction) was the anti-leader among the deputies in terms of the number of missed votes in the first hour of the Verkhovna Rada. The politician took part in only 4% of the vote.
Stepan Ivakhiv (deputy group "Party "For the Future") took part in 7% of the votes.
Vadym Rabinovych (co-chairman of the faction "Opposition Platform — For Life") came in third place with 8% of the votes.
Also on the list of deputies who almost did not vote, Igor Palitsa ("Party "For the Future") - 9% voted, Igor Abramovich (OPZZH) - 9%, Alexander Dubinsky ("Servant of the People") - 10,2%, Alexander Gerega – 10,4%, Andrey Derkach (non-factional) – 10,7%.
As noted by the head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, Oleksiy Koshel, information about the reasons for non-participation of people's deputies in the voting is unknown.
"It is not excluded that some of the votes were missed by the deputies for objective reasons. In particular, Gerega's representatives informed KIU that the deputy was officially on sick leave for a certain period of time. However, in general, deputies tend to skip voting and without valid reasons. As a rule, politicians explain their low performance by the fact that they deliberately ignore the so-called "unimportant" votes of the Verkhovna Rada, as well as the fact that non-participation in the votes is a sign of their protest against the decisions of the parliament," he said.
Koshel also added that last year the Verkhovna Rada introduced responsibility for non-participation of deputies in voting. Thus, if a people's deputy does not directly participate in more than 30% of the votes cast during a calendar month without good reason, such a people's deputy will not be reimbursed for expenses related to the performance of parliamentary powers for the corresponding calendar month. However, as KIU monitoring shows, deputies usually do not consider financial sanctions and continue to ignore the majority of votes cast.
