The public supports holding snap elections to the Verkhovna Rada. Do MPs oppose them?

The Verkhovna Rada building was picketed by a large crowd on June 17. The protesters demanded the dissolution of parliament and a new law on parliamentary elections. The latter, according to activists, should ensure a proportional voting system using open party lists, lowering the electoral threshold to 3 percent, transparent financing of election campaigns, and the inevitability of punishment for crimes against voting rights. Before the Rada’s entrance, the protesters made a “corridor of shame” out of portraits of MPs, and forced them to go through it as they went to the session. Speaker Oleksandr Turchynov voiced the protesters’ demands to the chamber, but the parliament did not listen to them and rejected three times inclusion of the draft laws on elections to the Verkhovna Rada into the agenda. “Batkivshchyna, Svoboda and Anatolii Kinakh’s group have launched a great effort to manipulate the truth,” MP Inna Bohoslovska posted on Facebook. “These political forces know very well that the results of snap parliamentary elections would be disastrous for them. Accordingly, they use the following technique: present to the chamber multiple conflicting drafts of laws on elections and electoral codes, knowing that in this case none of the bills will have a chance to gain votes. Thus, they mislead the parliament about election rules and do not address the re-election issue as such. Snap elections to the parliament are needed, and they should be held this fall, preferably at the end of October. I will file a resolution setting October 26, 2014 as the election date. The algorithm of the new elections must be only as follows: first the parliament decides on the election date, and then on changes to the law. Otherwise, the decision will never be adopted.”