One-third of Odesa City Council members do not use social media and hide their offices

Experts of the all-Ukrainian campaign "Certification of Local Council Deputies" have assessed the work of the deputies of the Odesa City Council in 2024.

This is stated in the study.

The monitoring covered 53 out of 56 deputies and showed that almost half of the elected officials received low scores. 36% of the deputies received only 0-2 points, another 30% scored an average of 3 points, and 15% of the deputies received a positive score of 4 points. Only 19% of MPs have the best results - 5 points - including Oleksandr Avdeev, Oleksiy Asaulenko, Oleh Etnarovych, Petro Obukhov, Oleksandr Slavskyi and several others.

See infographic: Attendance of local councils

According to the average indicators of the factions, Servant of the People is in the lead (3.8 points), European Solidarity is slightly behind (3.5 points), and Trust the Deeds gains only 2.8 points. Non-factional MPs (formerly from the Opposition Platform for Life or the Shariy Party) received the lowest average score of 2.1 points.

The assessment also revealed that most MPs remain low-profile. Only 11 deputies have full biographical information, 36 more have partially filled it out, and six do not even have a photo. Due to restrictions imposed by the city council, the portal does not have contact details of the deputies' offices, so the experts collected them through social media or requests, but only ten deputies responded.

As Anatoliy Boyko, head of the Odesa regional organization of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, noted during the presentation, only 62% of city council members are really actively communicating with voters on social media. Another 8% limit themselves to broadcasting information about their activities - without feedback, without responding to comments, or with completely closed opportunities for dialogue. And 30% of MPs do not use social media to communicate with citizens at all.

"They have accounts, but there is no information useful for voters. Similarly, only 30% of MPs publish full information about their receptions," he said.

Infographic: Attendance of local councils

According to Anatoliy Boyko, deputies very often retain control over the possibility of communication.

"If they are interested in this communication, they initiate it. And the voter is more limited in the possibility of feedback communication because, firstly, there is no complete information about the reception and it is difficult to find the deputy, or the deputy only informs or does not use social networks for communication at all," Boyko said during the online presentation of the monitoring results.

Recently, experts of the all-Ukrainian public campaign "Certification of Local Council Deputies" analyzed the declarations of the deputies of the Odesa City Council for 2021-2024. According to the data from the Unified State Register of Declarations, in 2024, the deputies and their family members declared UAH 1 billion in cash, and another UAH 129.9 million in bank accounts.

Ірина Глухова