Over the past five years, 41 MPs have left the Servant of the People faction, 21 of them resigned and another 20 joined other factions and groups, while the number of the faction has decreased from 254 to 233 members, according to a study by the Chesno movement based on the results of the work of the Verkhovna Rada of the IX convocation.
“According to the results of the 2019 elections, the Servant of the People managed to bring a record 254 deputies to the Rada – 124 list members and 130 majority members, who formed a mono-coalition for the first time in the history of Ukrainian parliamentarism. Formally, the “servants” still manage to maintain a majority in the parliament, as the faction still has more than 226 members. And this is despite the fact that 41 MPs have left the faction in five years,” the Chesno movement said on its website on Wednesday.
The report notes that some MPs left the faction due to their transfer to other positions, others because of high-profile corruption scandals or disagreement of individual MPs with the party line.
Three “servants” – first the list leader Dmytro Razumkov and Ruslan Stefanchuk, and after the roll call – Oleksandr Kornienko – joined the parliamentary leadership, so they formally left the faction and became non-factional. However, after Razumkov was recalled from the speaker’s post at the end of 2021, he did not return to the faction: thus, the first number on the Servant of the People list remained unaffiliated.
At the same time, Razumkov published a list of deputies of the new inter-factional association “Smart Policy,” which included 21 “servants,” but formally remained members of the faction. At that time, only two representatives of Razumkov’s group, Lyudmyla Buymister and the scandalous Odesa majoritarian Artem Dmytruk, were expelled from the Servant of the People. A few weeks later, another member of Razumkov’s MFO, Roman Sokha, left the faction.
Due to internal disagreements, in December 2019, majoritarian members Hanna Skorokhod and Anton Polyakov were also expelled from the Servant of the People, who later joined the For the Future group. At the same time, MP Roman Ivanisov was expelled from the faction because of information about his rape conviction.
The authors of the study recall that almost a year later, Geo Leros was expelled from the faction for criticizing the president and accusing the head of the OP, Andriy Yermak, and his brother of trading positions. The last high-profile “divorce” was the departure of Mariana Bezuhla from the faction. A few days after that, Yulia Yatsyk also left the faction on the third attempt.
It is noted that many “servants” left the faction amid high-profile corruption scandals. In particular, Kyiv majoritarian Oleksandr Yurchenko, whom NABU suspects of bribery, was expelled from the Servant of the People. In 2022, Oleh Voronko left the faction, and proceedings were opened against him for forgery.
And in 2023, Mykola Tyshchenko was expelled from the Servant of the People after his trip to Thailand, Bohdan Torokhtiia because he vacationed abroad during martial law, and Anatoliy Hunko, who was caught taking bribes.
Three MPs suspected of treason also left the faction. Thus, in the spring of 2021, the “servants” expelled majoritarian Oleksandr Dubinsky because he was included in the US sanctions list. A few months later, another majoritarian, Yevhen Shevchenko, who had publicly supported Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, was expelled from the faction. In 2022, the Servant of the People also expelled collaborator MP Oleksiy Kovalev, who had been actively helping the Russians in the occupied Kherson region since the beginning of the invasion.
“It is noteworthy that six notorious ‘servants’ ended up in the Restoration of Ukraine group, saving the association of pro-Russian MPs from possible collapse. Thus, in December 2023, when Anatoliy Hunko joined the group, it again had 17 MPs, which is the minimum number allowed (because for a parliamentary group to exist, it must include at least as many MPs as the smallest faction of the Rada),” the study notes.
Source: https://interfax.com.ua/
