Home › Politics › Why did Ukraine's parliament remove its speaker?
Why did Ukraine's parliament remove its speaker?
Summary
A retrospective on the Verkhovna Rada vote that ended Dmytro Razumkov's time as speaker.
What does it mean when a parliament dismisses its own speaker amid a dispute with the president? On 7 October 2021, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine decided to remove Dmytro Razumkov from the post of speaker.
The dismissal followed disagreements between Razumkov and President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as with the president's ruling Servant of the People party. At issue were the party's stances on legislation intended to reduce the influence of Ukrainian oligarchs.
The setting
The parliament that voted was the 9th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's unicameral legislature, which meets in Kyiv. That convocation began its term on 29 August 2019, following the last session of the 8th Verkhovna Rada.
Razumkov had led it as speaker. By 7 October 2021, his differences with the president and the governing party over the oligarch-related legislation had become part of the political dispute, and the Rada's decision ended his tenure in the post.
What the vote settled
The decision was a formal parliamentary act: the chamber itself, rather than any outside body, ended the speaker's term. It placed the dispute over how to curb oligarchic influence at the centre of the country's politics on that day, with the president's party and the outgoing speaker on opposite sides of it.
