Nearly 13 percent of Ukraine’s lawmakers, or 54 out of the 423 in the current parliament, have missed more than 90 percent of the votes held parliament so far this October, the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a civic watchdog, said on Oct. 22.
And some 14 lawmakers have failed to turn up for even a single vote this month, the committee said in a post on its website.
The worst of the truants include lawmakers Dmytro Yarosh, Vadim Rabinovich, Konstantyn Zhevago, Lev Pidlesetsky, Roman Zvarich, Glib Zagoriya, Dmytro Golubov and Uhim Zvyagilskiy.
The official website of Verhovna Rada states that the 14 were not on vacation and had no excuse for not voting.
However, three of those who failed to vote – Sergey Kleve, Evgen Bakulin and Oleksandr Onichenko – are on the wanted list in Ukraine and are currently out of the country.
Two others who failed to vote – Vyachislav Konstantinovsky and Andriy Zhurvhiy – are in the process of resigning, the committee said. Another, lawmaker Nadiia Savchenko, is behind bars awaiting trial.
Notable lawmakers who took part in less than 10 percent of the voting in October include Volodymyr Biletsky, Semen Semenchenko, Evgen Muraev, and Oles Dovgy. By faction, the most work-shy lawmakers come from the Opposition Bloc (11 lawmakers) and Volya Narody (eight lawmakers).
Opposition Bloc and Volya Narody lawmakers were also the least likely to vote in September, with 38 percent of the Volya Narody’s 18 lawmakers and 29 percent of the Opposition Bloc’s 43 lawmakers absent from work last month.
October’s lawmaker truancy figures were also worse than September’s, when 47 lawmakers missed over 90 percent of votes, and 11 failed to vote even once.
However, the overall trend is stable, with around 50 lawmakers, or about 12 percent of the total, regularly failing to participate in more than 90 percent of the votes in parliament.
