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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
City Council deputies elected from the banned OPZZh party systematically ignore votes on renaming streets and stripping the capital of Soviet and Russian names. At the same time, their turnout sharply rises when the agenda concerns the budget, land distribution, and leasing. This is stated in a study by the public initiative “Halka,” with the information partner being “Hlavkom.”
An analysis of more than 9,4 loud votes revealed a substantial gap in the priorities of former pro-Russian faction members. During consideration of decisions to remove imperial and Soviet toponyms from Kyiv's map, turnout of ex-OPZZh deputies falls by 14 percentage points from their average attendance. This proved to be the largest drop in turnout among all political forces represented in the city council. By contrast, at sessions where the city budget, municipal leasing, and land allotments are decided, deputies elected from OPZZh come much more often than usual.
photo: public initiative “Halka”
The situation is complicated by the fact that after the party was banned, new candidates from the list can no longer get into local councils. Because of this, when OPZZh representatives Olena Bukalo and Mariya Mark prematurely vacated their seats, their places in the Kyiv City Council simply remained vacant. Experts emphasize that the Supreme Court and the Parliament should have considered a government bill No. 7476 several years ago that would purge local authorities of pro-Russian forces, but it did not happen. Nevertheless, there are local councils that have shed OPZZh, for example the Kyiv regional council.
Despite the party ban, figures with an odious past remain in the Kyiv City Council—for instance Oleksandr Popov, who chaired Kyiv City State Administration during Viktor Yanukovych’s time and oversaw the installation of the “yolka” during the Revolution of Dignity, when the first forcible dispersal of Maidan occurred. In Kyiv mayoral elections in 2020 year he took second place after Vitali Klitschko, gaining the strongest support in the center of the capital, particularly on Pechersk.
Head of the NGO “Halka” Iryna Fedoriv emphasizes that the state should not rely solely on voters’ political memory. In her view, Parliament should create effective safeguards before the postwar elections. Now, according to Fedoriv, it is worth giving voters the right to recall deputies without a final party decision, in order to cleanse the local level of both pro-Russian politicians and corrupt officials.
By the way, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko rarely participates in Kyiv City Council votes on land issues. Over the last six years he has attended only on 437 out of 2 350 land-related votes considered on the merits. As a result, Klitschko supported only 168 land decisions — about 7% of their total.
On a side note, on the eve of the sixth anniversary of Kyiv City Council elections, “Halka” launched the tool “Reboot the country—it's within your power: Kyiv City Council.” It describes landmark useful and harmful City Council decisions and shows how each deputy and Mayor Vitali Klitschko voted on them. Kyiv residents can send information about their deputies to “Halka” and propose Kyiv Council decisions to be included in the tool. If a decision meets the methodology, the organization will take it into account. Anyone interested can obtain access to the systematized voting data of Kyiv City Council deputies by sending a request to [email protected].
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Дослідження викрило, які голосування у Київраді ігнорують депутати від забороненої ОПЗЖ". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ZmiOne.
