No room was found for the Communists in a country where revolution triumphed

Photo: UNIAN

Today the Communist Party faction in the Verkhovna Rada may seize to exist. Despite the promises of the Communists to stick together, MPs predict that many parliamentarians will join the existing deputy groups.

Regulation as a lever

Yesterday, Speaker of the Verkhnova Rada Oleksandr Turchynov stated that on Thursday he would announce the dissolution of the CPU faction. The grounds for this should be a new version of the VR regulations, which the deputies approved amendments this past Tuesday.

According to them the speaker of the parliament should announce the dismissal of factions (deputy groups) if their composite is less than the smallest faction registered during the first session of the parliament. CPU, which initially had 32 MPs, was the smallest faction in the parliament of the current convocation. Now the faction has only 23 deputies after some of its members jumped ship several weeks ago.

On Tuesday the changes in the VR regulations were signed by the president and today the law should be published in the Holos Ukrainy newspaper after which it will take force. “I will fulfill an historic mission: I will announce the cease of existence of the Communist faction,” Turchynov stated yesterday.

People’s deputy Vasyl Demediuk (CPU) feels the threat of sacking of his faction is a reprisal against the Communists for their political position, which the current ruling power does not support. “This bill was adopted under the pressure of Turchynov. On several occasions he put it up for vote and basically pressured its adoption,” Demediuk told Capital. He assured that members of the faction do not fear dismissal and are prepared to continue joint work in the Verkhovna Rada, but admitted that without a faction status the Communists will have less power to influence the inter-parliamentary process. For example, the leader of the CPU will not be allowed to participate in the conciliatory council of the VR for forming the agenda.

In turn, people’s deputy Yehor Firsov (UDAR) predicts that members of the current CPU faction will not stick together after dissolution of the faction, but instead will part ways and join other deputy groups. “They will vote for those bills that are in their best interests and receive money for this,” said Firsov.

People’s deputy of Batkivshchyna recalled with the right of anonymity that the CPU faction rendered open assistance in the adoption of bills under the government of Mykola Azarov and secretive assistance under the government of Yulia Tymoshenko. “Now the Cabinet does not query their votes, but there are bills that are business related. The price of a vote of the faction cannot be compared to a vote of a particular deputy,” the deputy said.

The CPU faction became a “symbolic victim” of public opinion demanding to punish the “fifth column” in the Verkhovna Rada, says political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko. “The statements of the Communists, which to a certain degree have anti-Ukrainian undertones, are to blame. This is none other than age-old dislike of them of the national-democrats and Svoboda members,” said the expert.

Besides that, Fesenko pointed out that the Verkhovna Rada regulations were specially rewritten in order to sack the CPU faction.

“The old guard created the faction artificially by rewriting the regulations. Now, with the aim of ousting the Communists new regulations were rewritten. The political situation provided for a quick, but far from original solution,” Fesenko underscored.
Noteworthy is that the other day the CPU faction left the VR session hall when deputies of the Svoboda party attacked CPU leader Petro Symonenko. First a member of the Svoboda faction Oleksiy Kaida accused Symonenko of dissemination of “untruthful anti-Ukrainian information” in an interview for a Russian TV channel. Then Svoboda members brutally forced Symonenko out of the session hall. He was followed by his comrades.

It gets worse

By happenstance today the first meeting of the District Court of Kyiv is planned during which it will review the lawsuit filed by the Ministry of Justice for banning of the activity of the CPU. According to the lawsuit, the grounds for banning the CPU include information of the State Security Service about the participation of rank-and-file CPU members in anti-state activities, including those of the terrorists. An interlocutor with Capital in the leadership of the CPU attributes the judicial proceedings against the party to attempts not to allow the party to participate in the early parliamentary elections, which may be held this autumn.
Fesenko said little known parties that declare radical left-wing views may stand to gain from prohibition of the CPU’s participation in the early elections.

“They will become attractive for investments of businessmen that will try to capitalize on this,” Fesenko believes. Besides that, activation of the process of the banning of the CPU is beneficial for the Batkivshchyna and Svoboda parties, which are exploiting anti-Communist rhetoric in their election campaigns.