A picture to go with the photos in Katia Gorchinskaya's Fear and loathing at the Kyiv Post. Warning it has bare-breasted Femen women braving the cold to make their political point on the first day of the new Ukrainian parliament. The Tabalovs are listed as members of the Rada on the website under the "Ts".
The two Tabalov tushki are followed by former education minister Dmytro Tabachnyk in alphabetical order.
"Oleksandr Tabalov and his son, Andriy, were both elected as Batkivshchyna party representatives, but refused to join the party's faction the day before the parliament was due to convene. The opposition interpreted as treason and demanded that they renounce their seats. Oleksandr Tabalov told reporters that he and his son “are not going [to join] any faction.” Andriy Tabalov, in one of his interviews to the Ukrainian media, said they were “pressured” by the government.
There is no legal mechanism to force the two tushkis – the nickname for those who desert their party and join someone else’s -- to give up their seats, though. So the opposition decided to apply psychological pressure, pinning their portraits to the podium, with the word “traitors” spelled out underneath. Iryna Herashchenko, a member of Vitali Klitschko's Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms faction, said the duo will be prevented from entering the session hall for all five years by the opposition.
Oleh Tiahnybok, leader of the Svoboda party, called the incident “a blow not only to Batkivshchyna, but to all of the opposition.” Perhaps, to compensate for the blow, his brother Andriy and several accomplices used one of the many breaks in sessions to cut down a metal fence surrounding the Rada. Then they broke a door to get back into the building because it was blocked by a special police unit."
Full article:
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/politics/fear-and-loathing-in-ukraines-new-parliament-317544.html
