MainNews -

Verkhovna Rada registers new draft law banning members of pro-Russian parties from running for office

The bill has been signed by members of the Servant of the People and Voice factions.

Verkhovna Rada registers new draft law banning members of pro-Russian parties from running for office
Photo: ngp-ua.info

A group of MPs from the Servant of the People and Voice (Holos) parties propose to ban MPs who were members of already banned parties at the time of the full-scale invasion from participating in elections at all levels, the author of the bill, MP from the Servant of the People faction Halyna Yanchenko, told LB.ua.

"Together with my colleagues, we registered a draft law on anti-Kremlin lustration. The draft law proposes to prohibit representatives of banned pro-Russian parties from running for councils of all levels and the Verkhovna Rada. There is a high risk that the next convocations of parliament and local councils will again include all the same Kremlin agents who will be elected under a new political banner, for example, from the notional party "For Peace." They will also continue to subvert the country from within and prepare the ground for possible new invasions by the aggressor country," she said.

The draft law will explicitly prohibit deputies who were members of pro-Russian parties or factions at the time of the full-scale invasion from running for office at all levels. Therefore, according to Yanchenko, the law will apply to the prohibition of running for village, district, and other local councils, up to the Verkhovna Rada. Other members of the Servant of the People and Voice factions are also co-authors of the draft law.

"It has been signed by 10 MPs. In particular, the draft law was signed by Mykyta Poturayev, Yegor Chernev, Oleksandr Merezhko, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, and others," the author of the bill noted.

Yanchenko believes that the current MPs from the former OPFL faction can also be deprived of their mandates ahead of schedule.

"According to the Constitution, the grounds could be court convictions or deprivation of Ukrainian citizenship. There are more than enough grounds to open criminal cases against MPs from the former OPFL. It would be possible to get to court verdicts fairly quickly. It's really a matter of a few months. If the procedure had been launched earlier, they would not have been MPs of the Verkhovna Rada for a long time. The other way is to deprive them of citizenship because of their many years of subversive activities. Now we need to do everything to make it impossible for them to be elected to the authorities in the future, which is what the draft law proposes," Yanchenko said.

Earlier, Halyna Yanchenko resigned from the Servant of the People party. However, the MP remains a member of the eponymous faction in parliament.

Read LB.ua news on social networks Facebook, Twitter and Telegram