Pro-government majority in Ukrainian Parliament is urgently “stamping” laws by just raising hands

Verkhovna Rada Deputees are voting on ‘simplified’ and ‘accelerated’ procedure (photo – Ukrainskyi Tyzhden).

Whereas after the first such voting results were being collected from fraction leaders, who were, at least, trying to count them, the subsequent ‘manual’ voting results  used to be immediately announced (without actual counting) by the Head of the Parliament votes counting commission, ruling Party of Region member, Volodymyr Oliynyk. Most of the time, he pronounced the same number over and over  – 235 ‘yes’. An average time it took him to ‘count voices’ took just two seconds per each issue – he kept announcing the results immediately, so he barely was able to count them correctly.

As you can see, Volodymyr Oliynyk is standing on the outskirts of the hearings hall, surrounded (or, rather, safeguarded) by his party mates. Hardly anybody is really able (or even trying to pretend) to actually count any votes (i.e., raised hands) (photo – Ukrainskyi Tyzhden).

As a response, opposition fractions’ deputees were just laughing aloud.

While, non-factional deputee Ihor Ieremeiev, when asked by Kaletnik to announce the total number of non-factional votes ‘yes’, answered: “What do you expect me to tell you? That all the non-factional deputees have voted? I don’t even see them…”

To remind, today Verkhovna Rada has adopted the state budget for the year 2014 without any discussions or debates.

/source/