The issue of the abolition of deputies’ immunity should be considered in the Verkhovna Rada simultaneously with the adoption of the draft law on the impeachment of the President of Ukraine and the subsequent creation of the appropriate temporary investigative commissions. This was stated during a press briefing in Parliament by the Head of the UKROP political council, MP Taras Batenko.
“Together with abolition of parliamentary immunity, a bill on the impeachment of the President of Ukraine is to be considered and adopted, and temporary investigative commissions are to be set up. That is the mechanism that may start the procedure of impeachment of the head of state,” said the politician.
According to him, only a legally established mechanism of the presidential impeachment and the activity of the temporary investigative commissions can eliminate the imbalance of power after the abolition of parliamentary immunity. Without these instruments, Ukraine faces a risk of destruction of parliamentarism as an independent branch of power and transition to a complete dictatorship of one person.
“There is no enlightened dictatorship or dark dictatorship. The usurpation of power always ends in the same way in any country in the world,” said Taras Batenko.
At the same time, the MP has noted that the representatives of UKROP display solidarity with the requirements of society and have supported the referral of draft laws on the abolition of parliamentary immunity to the Constitutional Court.
However, the priority of the agenda of parliament and society today should be a victory in the war in eastern Ukraine, which has already taken lives of more than ten thousand fighters, officers and civilians.
Unfortunately, the Ukrainian authorities do not have any plan for resolving the conflict, as evidenced in particular by the draft law No. 7163 “On the peculiarities of the state policy on ensuring the state sovereignty of Ukraine over temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions” adopted in the first reading. Despite the fact that the document finally recognizes the Russian Federation as an enemy, it does not propose any mechanism for the return of the occupied territories and needs a lot of changes.
