The People's Front faction in the Verkhovna Rada has decided to elect three co-chairs: Andriy Teteruk, Viktoria Syumar, and Olena Ledovskikh. People's Front MP Oleksandr Sochka told Kapital.
"We will have three faction co-chairs; this decision was made at yesterday's faction meeting (Monday – Kapital). We needed to find a formula for internal balance, and we ended up with this option," he says.
According to him, each of the co-chairs will oversee their own area: Teteruk will oversee military issues, Syumar will oversee political contacts and discussions of legislative drafts, and Ledovskikh will oversee internal organizational issues.
Sochka said that “the faction is optimistic about this management model, but if it doesn’t work, we will be able to find a different organizational model.”
As a reminder, the People's Front faction was previously headed by Oleksandr Turchynov, who resigned his parliamentary mandate in December after being appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. Andriy Teteruk, who held the position of First Deputy Head of the faction, served as acting faction leader.
Former MP and member of the Batkivshchyna party's political council, Andriy Pavlovsky, told Capital that the newly elected co-chairs of the People's Front will represent the interests of various influence groups that currently exist within the faction.
"The faction is indeed run by several people, but they aren't the ones who have been put in the forefront. They are merely hired managers. And the decisions and policy-making of the faction (and indeed the entire political force) are determined by MPs Andriy Ivanchuk, Mykola Martynenko, and Serhiy Pashynsky. These are the people closest to Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleksandr Turchynov. Pashynsky, for one, can't relinquish his leadership of the committee, as the People's Front needs to control its influence on the defense situation. While Turchynov leads the National Security and Defense Council, Pashynsky, his close confidant, is leading this direction in parliament. Ledovskikh is Mykola Martynenko's right-hand woman, his office manager. She has always organized the work of Martynenko's inner circle since the days of Our Ukraine," Pavlovsky explained.
A source in the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction told the publication that behind the scenes in parliament, Andriy Teteruk is known to be close to the team of Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration Chairman Ihor Kolomoisky. Previously, former Deputy Head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration and MP Borys Filatov (non-affiliated) confirmed in an interview with LIGABusinessInform that Teteruk is close to Kolomoisky's team.
"Can Andriy Teteruk from Kyiv's Myrotvorets Battalion be considered Kolomoisky's man? He's a close comrade of ours, but Kolomoisky has never even met him. I just know that if something happens, Andriy will always support us," Filatov said.
As a reminder, in January, the People's Front faction refused to vote in favor of a bill to reduce the quorum for joint-stock company meetings from 60% to 50%. This provoked criticism of the faction's defense of the Privat Group's interests, as the adopted law directly affected its interests in Ukrnafta, where private shareholders, holding 42% of the company's shares, repeatedly blocked shareholder meetings.
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