On April 7 2011 Ukrainian Parliament voted on new law on prevention and counteraction of corruption. The voting occurred in a half empty parliament. The absence of a large percentage of MPs was glaringly evident on live TV broadcasts from Parliament.
Since April 6 the official website of Ukrainian Parliament lists ledger results of MPs written registration they sign before each day the meetings are held. This site also publishes the results of electronic registration of MPs (by inserting keycards into readers) and the results of their votes cast with the these cards. These lists – the ledger and the electronic registration – do mismatch seriously.
The Anti-Corruption Law was voted by 277 “electronic” votes (official data in Ukrainian), while the ledger list (official data in Ukrainian) shows only 158 MPs of these 277 registered. It means the votes of 119 “dead souls” (absent MPs) were counted. Learn what “dead souls” means for Ukraine in this accurate wikipedia article.
This new practice of ledger results publication was made possible due to efforts of few honest MPs and civic activists, described in details here Scandalous fraud in Ukrainian Parliament, PROVEN.
Previously, on March 17 2011, pressured by citizens and law abiding MPs, the speaker of Parliament had to call a vote on the legislation to regulate the electronic biometric voting system, in order to prevent abuse. The legislation lacked 4 voices to pass. The electronic system did not register even one valid vote. MP Yuriy Stets filed complaint to the Attorney General as well.
Our monitors had filmed all relevant activity in parliament on that day. Those who want to understand how the fraud occurs please watch these two videos in full.
Short video pictures in details how MPs vote for others (for 2,3,5,6 other MPs).
Translation of feedback on youtube: “What the hell is that!?!?. I had not seen such disorder in school, in university, in the army, in my work – never saw this!!!!!!! This gang rules us!?!?
Longer video pictures the whole process of legislation adoption. Please pay special attention to an MP collecting the keycards of absent members (starting 49:00).
Members of Parliament of Ukraine are nicknamed the piano players. The Maidan Alliance had asked the citizens of Ukraine to join the civic campaign named “Shoot the Piano Player!”. You can join our campaign on facebook .
We asked campaign activists to submit public statements on the issue of non personal voting of Ukrainian MPs. Here is the statement of Evgen Zakharov, director of Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
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