Kyiv tent city reaches fourth day with expectations of vote today

Protests outside Ukraine’s parliament extended into
their fourth day this morning, with an estimated 700 activists patrolling the tent
city, the pravda.com.ua news site said. Activists hope parliament will vote on
their three demands in today’s session following a vote on a medical reform
package. These demands are approving open-list proportional voting in
parliamentaty elections, creating an independent anti-corruption court and
ending political immunity for MPs. President Poroshenko scheduled a meeting
yesterday evening with the protest leaders at the Presidential Administration,
but declined to invite them because they were with activists that had not been
cleared, the news site said.

Two bills on removing political immunity from MPs will
be reviewed by parliament today, Parliamentary Speaker Andriy Parubiy said from
the presidium this morning. “I think that we will be able to not only have a
positive result today, but a very high one, close to 300 votes,” he said. A
simple majority consists of 226 votes. Parliament will also review in the
afternoon three bills to amend the election law, he said.

Zenon Zawada: The debate
and voting on the election law will be most revealing. It’s our expectation
that President Poroshenko and his allies will do everything possible to keep
the current election system in place, which involves selecting half the
parliament by closed-list proportional voting, and the other half by
single-mandate voting. The protesters want all seats to be determined by
open-list proportional voting, which would significantly weaken the grip that
oligarchs have on the voting system.