Stolar is still a member of parliament. How is the trial proceeding in court after the congress of the Opposition Platform – For Life, which deprived him of his mandate?

Last autumn, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court ruled on Vadym Rabinovych’s lawsuit against the Opposition Platform – For Life party (OPFL). The former MP demanded recognition that his associates – Tetiana Plachkova, Ihor Abramovych, Vadym Stolar – were unlawfully deprived of their mandates at the party congress in March 2022.

In its decision, the Grand Chamber noted that after the party congress, which decided to deprive the mandates of those who were brought to power by the party on its list, mandates are immediately lost.

Therefore, parliament should not vote on this matter.

Rabinovych’s lawsuit was rejected because there was “no justification for the negative impact of the party congress and the decisions taken on it on specific real individual rights, freedoms, or interests of the plaintiff himself, rather than specific members of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the premature termination of whose powers was precisely related to the decision of the party congress.”

Thus, the Supreme Court evaluated the evidence and recognized that the party congress took place and that Plachkova, Abramovych, and Stolar were recalled at it.

Since then, even the Opposition Platform – For Life (OPFL) party has been banned, but the issue of parliamentary mandates remains unresolved. Stolar is still in litigation to determine that the congress had no legal force. At the end of 2023, the Supreme Court ruled to transfer the case for jurisdiction to the Kyiv District Administrative Court.

After the full-scale invasion, MPs from the Opposition Platform – For Life party fled the faction and issued official statements. According to the law, leaving the faction gives the party the right to recall such MPs.

At the party congress, three MPs were stripped of their mandates: Igor Abramovich, Tetiana Plachkova, and Vadym Stolar. This happened on March 17, 2022. The next day, the relevant documents from the party were submitted to the Verkhovna Rada, as stated in the resolution of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court.

Afterward, Vadym Rabinovych, who was co-chair of this pro-Russian political project, filed a lawsuit against the Opposition Platform – For Life party, seeking to declare the party congress invalid due to procedural violations.

Rabinovych argued that for the congress to be valid, the presence of both co-chairs – himself and MP Yuriy Boyko – was required. As for Rabinovych, he had already left Ukraine before the start of the full-scale invasion.

“We always spoke about peace. The party was built as a peace party! But now there is no peace! The party’s activity has been terminated!” Rabinovych declared in 2022.

By the way, he himself had already lost his mandate because he was stripped of citizenship, and the Verkhovna Rada voted on it. Moreover, half a year ago, he was accused of state treason.

Meanwhile, the court continued to consider Rabinovych’s lawsuit, and it reached the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court. Given that information about the banning of the Opposition Platform – For Life (OPFL) party has been known since 2022, the decision of the Grand Chamber in late 2023 in this case did not attract proper attention from either the parliament or the media, although the text of this decision is very important.

The Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court drew attention to the fact that Rabinovych had no right to file such a lawsuit at all because he was not a representative of the interests of either Plachkova, Abramovych, or Stolar. His arguments were termed “abstract.”

However, there is a very important point in the text of the ruling that needs to be highlighted:

“According to the content of part two of Article 81 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the powers of a People’s Deputy of Ukraine shall be terminated ahead of schedule in case of:… withdrawal of a People’s Deputy of Ukraine from the parliamentary faction of a political party (paragraph 6)… According to the content of part six of the specified article, in case of withdrawal of a People’s Deputy of Ukraine from the parliamentary faction of a political party, his powers shall be terminated ahead of schedule on the basis of the law by the decision of the highest governing body of the respective political party from the date of adoption of such decision.”

Thus, the judges of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court noted that in the event of a deputy leaving the faction, his powers are terminated by the decision of the party’s highest governing body from the date of adoption of such decision. Therefore, no decision of the Verkhovna Rada or statement from the People’s Deputy, for which the parliament then votes, is required.

Abramovych lost his mandate a year ago, and Plachkova lost hers at the end of July 2023. This happened only after they themselves wrote statements, and parliament voted for this.

On February 24, 2024, it will be exactly two years since the full-scale war began—Stolar, whom the party congress recalled, still remains a deputy, sometimes coming to the session hall and voting.

The law allowed parties to recall those who left the parliamentary faction of a political force in the Verkhovna Rada. A similar procedure applies to deputies of local councils. Such mechanisms were introduced to minimize the influence of buying and selling deputies after elections. Deputies who switched to another political force after the elections were previously called “carcasses.”

Accordingly, if an opposition member of parliament decided to leave the faction and join the majority, this majority would never support his recall because he would be needed as a “+1 vote.” Therefore, lawmakers did not foresee a council decision for recall.

A similar mechanism operates at the local level. At the end of 2023, the “Servant of the People” recalled deputies of the Kyiv Regional Council, who were “canned” supporters of the now-suspect MP Oleksandr Dubinsky, who was accused of state treason. They lost their mandates immediately after the party congress, and no one here waited for them to voluntarily write statements, like Plachkova or Abramovych, or for the decision of the Kyiv Regional Council.

“The content of part six of Article 81 of the Constitution of Ukraine states that in case of withdrawal of a People’s Deputy of Ukraine from the parliamentary faction of a political party, his powers shall be terminated ahead of schedule on the basis of the law by the decision of the highest governing body of the respective political party from the date of adoption of such decision. This is a provision of the Constitution of Ukraine, and the decision of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court merely confirmed this. Based on the facts established by the Supreme Court, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has known since March 18, 2022, about the termination of the powers of the specified deputies—and from this moment, the apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine should not have counted them or their assistants for salary, considered them during voting, etc.,” says Roman Tytykalo, lawyer and deputy of the Kyiv Regional Council (ES).

Stolar can visit the parliament after the congress whenever he wants and can participate in voting. The controversial Nestor Shufrych, essentially until he was detained by law enforcement, chaired the Committee on Freedom of Speech and when the media asked Vice-Speaker Oleksandr Kornienko why the parliament wouldn’t replace the committee head, Kornienko replied that he was waiting for “Nestor Ivanovych” to leave on his own. And here, in contrast, one can recall how the Verkhovna Rada illegally suspended two deputies, Geo Leros and Halyna Tretyakova, from attending the sessions. No such instrument was applied to any MP from the former OPFL.

Stolar appealed the fact that his congress revoked his powers to the Supreme Court, but from there, he was directed to the district court, which closed the case. And now, the appeal is reviewing the ruling on closing the proceedings. That’s how time drags on.

“The situation is ambiguous, which allows for different opinions and manipulations. However, in my opinion, from the date of the decision to terminate the powers by the party congress, Stolar is not a People’s Deputy. On September 21, 2023, this position was not changed by the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court. On December 27, 2023, it was not changed by the Kyiv District Administrative Court. It is highly likely that the ruling of the Kyiv District Administrative Court will remain unchanged, and the complaint will be dismissed. After that, the right to appeal will be exercised. The existence of a long-standing legal dispute, however, provides formal and substantive reasons to insist on the need to await the final decision in the case of Mr. Stolar’s lawsuit,” says Dmytro Terlets’kyi, lawyer and candidate of legal sciences.

Indeed, the Stolar case has been in the courts for two years. This is despite the fact that during this time, nearly 20 pro-Russian parties have been banned in the courts, and regarding one MP, a decision to approve was never made.

And there may be motives here. The votes of former OPFL are needed for the monomajority. The “Servant of the People” themselves admitted that there is a “constructive” cooperation between them. This may be one of the reasons why the issue of OPFL is being resolved so slowly. When scandalous bills with minimal votes pass through the session hall, representatives of the now-banned party can save the situation. And one of Plachkova’s votes in 2022 confirms this.

People’s Deputy Yulia Klymenko (“Holos”) notes that over these two years, MPs from the former OPFL have significantly strengthened their positions:

“They not only did not disappear from the Ukrainian parliament but also strengthened their positions, dividing into 2 groups, which now have 2 votes in the conciliation council and participate, including in secret meetings, and now 2 groups of OPFL have blocking votes in parliament, which ‘Servants’ depend on.

As long as a member of parliament is officially listed in the Verkhovna Rada, he and his assistants can receive budget funds.

To find out how much money these three politicians and their assistants received, the public initiative “Holka” applied to People’s Deputy Yulia Klymenko (“Holos”) at the beginning of the year, and she sent a parliamentary appeal to the Verkhovna Rada Apparatus.

Answers to questions regarding budget funds are currently unavailable from the Apparatus. Essentially, they provided a response to the People’s Deputy and indicated that they see “signs… of a parliamentary inquiry” in the text of her parliamentary appeal. To understand the difference between a parliamentary appeal and a parliamentary inquiry— a People’s Deputy can submit an appeal themselves, while a vote in the Verkhovna Rada is required for an inquiry.

The same questions were duplicated by the public initiative “Holka” to the Verkhovna Rada not only via email but also through the “Access to Truth” service. The Apparatus took a break of 20 working days to prepare this information.

While the data was being collected, Stolar’s declaration finally appeared. He received slightly less than 40,000 UAH in 2022. Plachkova filed a declaration for 2022 and indicated an income of almost 270,000, and when she took office, she declared about 150,000 in salary in the Verkhovna Rada.

But the budget funds received by former OPFL deputies are far from the key issue. Over 10 years of war, we still have not formed a state policy to protect national security from pro-Russian influence.

The parliament is only preparing to consider in the second reading a government bill (8371), which aims to ban the activities of the “fsb in robes” (the so-called Moscow Patriarchate).

But for over a year, another government bill (7476), aimed at cleansing local self-government of deputies from banned parties, has not made it to the session hall.

And this is despite the fact that it received support from the relevant committee, and Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk received a petition with the signatures of over 150 MPs demanding that the Cabinet’s initiative be included in the agenda.

By the way, voters cannot even recall deputies from banned parties. The final decision on depriving local party deputies of their mandates is made by the party, and pro-Russian parties— which are banned— cannot hold congresses.

Therefore, unlike all other deputies of local councils, deputies from banned parties have essentially become untouchable for voters. And with this reality, we enter the 11th year of war with an aggressor state.

Specially for “Left Bank“.