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Vitaly Bogovin considers himself the legitimate leader of the Zaporizhzhya Regional Council, photo: zor.gov.ua
Dual power reigned in the Zaporozhye regional council. Two people now call themselves the elected head of the regional council – the head of the Zaporozhye regional state administration, Vitaly Bogovin, who was removed from office on Friday, December 18, who entered the regional council on the list of the Servant of the People party (SN). , and the deputy of the regional council Vitaliy Tolochek – also the list of SN, who left the faction with a scandal …
The situation with the president is the result of the scandalous first session of the newly elected composition of the assembly, where the interests of various influence groups in the region converged.
Details are in the “Countries” article.
Strictly by numbers
The first session of the regional council of the new – the eighth – call was opened on December 11 and lasted more than 10 hours, but the president of the meeting could not be elected in this plenary session.
In the presence of the police, two candidates were chosen: Bogovin, nominated by the SN, and Gennady Shevchenko, chosen from the party list of the mayor of Zaporozhye, Volodymyr Buryak, “Edinenie”.
The head of the Regional State Administration was considered the favorite, but received only 40 votes from deputies. And at least 43 votes out of 84 are needed, and this is exactly the number of deputies from the SN (19), Unity (9), Opposition (OB, 8) and Batkivshchyna (7) factions who supported his candidacy.
Note that this is a fairly typical image of a pro-government coalition in regional councils that form after elections. They include “servants”, parties of the local elites (in the case of Zaporozhye, this is the “Opposition Bloc” party supervised by Akhmetov and the mayor of Buryak, close to the oligarch, with his party) and “Batkivshchyna”. A similar situation has developed, for example, in Kharkov and Odessa.
But in Zaporozhye, everything immediately went wrong due to the fact that some of the “servants” refused to vote for Bogovin, although they tried to force them to do so in very exotic ways.
According to the deputy of the regional council of “European Solidarity” (EU) Igor Artyushchenko, the members of the factions loyal to Bogovin were forced to put in the ballot the numbers of deputies’ terms instead of ticks or plus signs (so that then you could understand who was voting how, even though the vote was secret is, in fact, this is a violation of procedure).
But even this “feint” didn’t help: there weren’t enough votes.
However, the results of the vote were never announced. According to Artyushchenko, most of the counting commission withdrew “headed by the president of the Bogovin State Regional Administration.”
The versions of what happened in the regional council on December 15 differ. A new meeting of the first session was scheduled for that day. The SN, OB, Edineniya and Batkivshchyna factions claim that their deputies, in the number of 43 people, met in hall n. 300 of the Zaporizhzhya Regional State Administration (in fact, it was a cabinet for the governor’s meetings) and were supposedly elected by secret ballot as chairman of the regional council Bogovin, who was immediately sworn in.
Members of other factions were unable to enter the room even with the help of the police. People who called themselves “war veterans in the Donbas” stood at the closed doors.
According to the HLS People’s Deputy Vladimir Kaltsev, who observed what was happening in the Regional State Administration, four SN deputies were forcibly held in the room.
“They later said at a press conference that there were no ballot papers or ballot boxes, that they were forced to sign some papers. And then Bogovin declared himself the head of the regional council,” he told Strana.
We are talking about MPs Roman Terekhov, Sergei Selevich, Yuri Kapustyansky and Viktor Tolochek, who then announced their withdrawal from the SN faction and the creation of a new “Ze-faction”.
In a briefing immediately after the meeting, Bogovin avoided the question of why colleagues from opposing factions and journalists were not allowed in, but argued that his choice was legal.
“Everything was filmed, in accordance with the regulations. All protocols have been signed, all records have been signed by the majority. Everything happened within the framework of the law,” he said.
However, the Eurosolidaridad faction claims that the deputies who were in room 300 of the Regional State Administration (in fact, the office of the head of the regional state administration) “were forced to vote again several times until a brand for Vitaly Bogovin “.
In the OLEZH faction he called the events in the regional council “undemocratic coup”.
“We do not recognize false decisions made up on our knees by some of the deputies in the governor’s office, and we consider the regional council session invalid,” Oppoplatform said and we have already written a statement on the crime to law enforcement agencies.
The opposition has overcome in its own way
The situation developed on December 17. The meeting chaired by Bogovin did not take place due to lack of a quorum. Only 35 deputies were registered.
In principle, this was expected: after an open revolt by four deputies of the “servants of the people”, the pro-government coalition no longer had a majority in the regional administration (maximum: 39 people, with 43 required).
Bogovin set the next meeting for December 24.
However, the OLE (23 deputies), UE (10) and “For the Future” (8) factions, who did not agree with Bogovin’s election, plus four deputies calling themselves the “Ze faction”, met and in the presence of the media they held elections for their president of the regional council, for whom 44 deputies voted.
It was Viktor Tolochek. The MPs elected the former chairman of the Zaporizhzhya regional council, PLWL MP Pavel Matvienko as its first MP and Gennady Fuks (For the future) and Oleg Chernov (EU) as MPs.
In his comment to “Strana”, Deputy Kaltsev (OPSZ) calls Tolochek the legitimate president and predicts that the decision on Bogovin will be canceled through the courts.
“Bogovin, being then still the head of the Regional State Administration, used administrative resources and forced the regional council to put all the stamps … A person does not understand that he lives in a democratic country. He could also freely call himself the French emperor, Pope … We filed a lawsuit in court and, I think, we will achieve justice, because there has already been a precedent. But Bogovin believes that all this will drag on, it will be possible to intimidate people. It will not work, “Kaltsev tells” Strana. “
At the same time, the people’s deputy of the SN Yevgeny Shevchenko, elected in a majority district in Zaporozhye, believes that Bogovin is the head of the regional council in the Unified Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs and Public Formations.
“Until the court makes a decision, he is the president,” Shevchenko told “Strana.”
At the same time, he predicted that Bogovin would find it difficult to make decisions at the regional council, where he was “in the minority.”
“The real culprits of the situation are those who formed the lists of People’s Servants in the regional council: Kryachko and Trofimov. There was not a single candidate from me or from Kabanov’s colleague. And this is the result: scandals, withdrawals from the faction “, says the deputy.
Member of the parliamentary faction SN, the list of Mikhail Kryachko, in the faction, belongs to the influence group of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov, in whose company he worked until the victory of Volodymyr Zelensky in the presidential elections (himself Fedorov of Zaporozhye).
Trofimov is the former first deputy chief in the Office of the President who oversaw regional policy. Alexander Kabanov is another majority deputy from the Zaporozhye region. When the article was published, Kryachko did not answer the publication’s questions.
People’s MP Alexander Kabanov (SN) told Strana that the compilation of the lists was supervised by Mikhail Fedorov himself, who is responsible for the region through the party line.
“Misha is a very systematic person. But I think because of her government job, she trusted someone. I, and not just me, were against Tolochek, Kapustyansky on our lists. We understood that what could have happened in This it happened despite the fact that Tolochek headed the SN headquarters in Zaporozhye, and Kapustyansky headed the regional headquarters, being a member of the political council of the regional organization, “says Kabanov.
The candidate he proposed was not included on the regional list.
The people’s deputy has a hard time saying what will happen next around the chair.
“As far as I understand, Kirill Vladlenovich (Timoshenko, deputy director of the OP, who took the regional leadership – Ed.) Is in charge of this issue. He, of course, has more information,” Kabanov commented.
The situation for the OP is really difficult. With a disappointing result in the elections in the Zaporozhye region, where the OPSZ won, Bankova may get another disloyal leader of the regional council if Oppoplatform with its allies has its way.
The representatives of the authorities (formally, Bogovin was still the head of the Regional State Administration at the time of the attempt to be elected), by their methods, put themselves in a bad position, interrupted the work of the meeting indefinitely.
One more crisis has added to the long list of crises facing the Office of the President; solutions, like others, are not visible.
