Kyiv, September 15, 2014 – The future parliamentarians who come from the ‘third sector’ plan to create their own inter-factional association. This was stated by the civic activists and journalists Vasyl Gatsko, Oleh Derevianko, Ostap Yednak, Svitlana Zalishchuk, Serhiy Leshchenko, Mustafa Nayem, Oleksiy Ryabchyn, Oksana Syroid, Natalia Sokolenko, Viktoria Sumar, Vitaliy Shabunin, Oleksandr Chernenko and Aliona Shkrum during a press briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center. Recently, they have been included into lists of parliamentary candidates from five political parties to participate in early parliamentary elections on October 26 – “Batkivshchyna”, “Block of Petro Poroshenko”, “Hromadianska Pozytsiya,” “Narodny Front” and “Samopomich”.
Journalist Mustafa Nayem noted that he did not idealize those political forces, which he and his associates will represent in the parliament. Concurrently, Nayem stands for the creation of a new political force based on the Maidan civic activists which in a few years from now would be able to get into the parliament on its own. His colleague Serhiy Leshchenko noted that the decision to participate in elections has been made by the activists themselves, rather than in response to the proposal of political parties. “It was us who decided to go into politics, and not them who called us,” explained the journalist.
The ‘third sector’ candidates have outlined their legislative initiatives in the new parliament. Oleh Derevianko, for example, names among his priorities the development and adoption of a new electoral law on a proportional basis by open lists, clear law on public funding of political parties and civil service reform. Other activists added that the pressing issue was the regulation of lobbying in Ukraine, solving the problems of migrants from Donbass and Crimea, implementation of the public broadcasting law which was adopted in the spring, the fight against corruption.
Commenting on a public skepticism about the parliamentary campaign of the civic activists, Natalia Sokolenko noted that after having decided to go into politics, she and her supporters stopped public and journalistic activities and disclosed their tax declarations. Commenting on the recent decline in salaries of deputies and their assistants, she stated that it was populism. Alex Ryabchyn added that an urgent task for government was to create conditions, including material incentives to attract talented and educated youth to work for the government, instead of business.