What did Ukraine's parliament decide on 3 September 2019?
A retrospective on the vote to lift immunity from people's deputies, days after the ninth Verkhovna Rada convened.
What did Ukraine's newly seated parliament do with its first major vote? On 3 September 2019, the Verkhovna Rada approved a bill providing for the removal of immunity from people's deputies.
The vote came only days after the ninth convocation of the Verkhovna Rada held its first sitting on 29 August 2019. At that sitting, deputies elected Dmytro Razumkov as head of the Rada. Oleksiy Honcharuk became Prime Minister, and Ivan Bakanov was named head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
A quick sequence
The order of events is the clearest feature of the period. Within a week, the chamber had filled its top posts, installed a new government head and then turned to a measure affecting its own members. Taking up the immunity question so soon after convening placed it among the new parliament's first decisions.
What it meant for deputies
The bill's central provision was the removal of immunity from people's deputies. That meant a change in the legal position of the very people who voted on it. The approval on 3 September 2019 was a vote on that principle, passed by the chamber that had been in session for less than a week.
Beyond the vote itself and the appointments of 29 August 2019, the sequence shows a parliament and a new government taking up their duties at the same time.
