Members of BYuT faction are ready to sacrifice their mandates of deputies, only to prevent Viktor Yanukovich from becoming Prime Minister. (from left to right: Yulia Timoshenko, Alexander Turchinov, Nikolai Tomenko).
Photo: Konstantin Ilyanok
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Viktor Yushchenko Receives Right to Dissolve Supreme Rada
// Our Ukraine and the Party of Regions are about to form a coalition
The struggle for power
Today is the deadline for Ukrainian parliamentary majority to form the government. Formally, President Viktor Yushchenko has the right to dissolve the Rada and appoint new elections beginning from today. However, it seems Yushchenko will not use this right. On the contrary, the talks on creating a new broad coalition of Our Ukraine and the Party of Regions are almost finished.
Two demarches
The Supreme Rada waited yesterday for President Yushchenko to nominate Viktor Yanukovich for Prime Minister. Moreover, the deputies gathered, despite that Monday was a holiday, precisely for this reason. “We expect the president to nominate Yanukovich for Prime Minister on Monday,” declared Socialist Nikolai Rudkovsky, the closest associate of Rada Speaker Alexander Moroz. Reminding that the sides were in active talks for the last few days, Rudkovsky stated that “the president wants to reach agreement.” However, he also mentioned the possibility of impeachment, if the president does not nominate Yanukovich in time.
Yet, the aspirations of the “anti-crisis coalition” did not come true. Nothing was heard about Yanukovich’s nomination from the president’s office yesterday. Meanwhile, none of the deputies raised the question of impeachment. This threat, however, might become real only if move than 300 deputies support the impeachment—that is, the present coalition needs the votes of either Our Ukraine or BYuT. Neither of the factions supported the plans of the Socialists so far.
BYuT prepared an alternative program for the special session of the Rada. BYuT leader Timoshenko presented a document called “Declaration of Will of BYuT Faction Deputies”. Its main idea is that all 125 BYuT deputies are ready to vacate their seats. According to Timoshenko, her supporters are ready for this step only to give Yushchenko another reason for dissolving the Rada and an opportunity not to nominate Yanukovich.
However, according to the law, the Rada can be dissolved only if one third of the deputies vacate their seats. So, members of another faction need to join BYuT’s demarche. Timoshenko herself urged Our Ukraine to give up their mandates and thus speed up the dissolution of the Rada. Yet, Our Ukraine did not support BYuT’s initiative. “If they are asking us to abnegate powers, we will not do it,” Our Ukraine’s spokesman Roman Zvarych said.
Two candidates
No candidate was nominated for Prime Minister yesterday, because the parties are still in tense talks on the structure of the coalition. Our Ukraine cannot yet cope with the fact that the government will be formed without its participation, and Yushchenko cannot cope with his old enemy Yanukovich as Prime Minister. Yanukovich openly confessed yesterday that active bargaining is going on between his supporters and the president’s team. Speaking about the distribution of positions in the future government, he said: “The question is not yet solved because Our Ukraine has not made up its mind about entering the new coalition. If they do enter, the positions will be distributed according to the number of mandates of the deputies from each faction.”
Ukrainian mass media say the talks between Our Ukraine and the Party of Regions concerning their unification are in their final stage. Sources report the president’s team has laid down several conditions, including dismissing the Communists from the faction, and choosing any other candidate for Prime Minister except for Yanukovich. The fact that Sunday talks went without Yanukovich might be the evidence the Regionals do not exclude the option to get rid of their leader. Our Ukraine leader Roman Bessmertny, Socialist party leader Vasily Tsushko, members of the Party of Regions Raisa Bogatyreva, Nikolai Azarov, and Andrey Klyuev took part in the talks. Yesterday’s negotiations for creating the new coalition went without a candidate for Prime Minister as well. After the talks, Klyuev said the “legal form of cooperation between the coalition and Our Ukraine will be found very soon.” Klyuev confirmed that there exist certain agreements which might serve as a basis for a compromise.
The variants concerning who will head the new government, if the compromise is reached and the Regionals give up nominating Yanukovich, are already being thought of. There are two obvious candidates: acting Prime minister of Our Ukraine Yuri Ekhanurov, and the head of pre-election staff of the Party of Regions Evgeny Kushnarev.
The Regionals’ deputy Taras Chornovil has recently confirmed that Yuri Ekhanurov has good chances to remain Prime Minister: “Ekhanurov is a wonderful member of the government. And he would be, perhaps, the best Prime Minister,” said Chornovil, who headed Yanukovich’s pre-election staff in 2004. Chornovil added that Ekhanurov is the only candidate for whose sake the Party of Regions would give up nominating Yanukovich. “We were ready to nominate Ekhanurov as a candidate from our faction. We believe he is eligible for the position,” said Chornovil.
Moreover, the Party of Regions openly names the members of Our Ukraine who could enter the new government of the broad coalition. Beside Yuri Ekhanurov, this is current acting Minister of Economic Development Arseny Yatsenyuk and former Deputy Prime Minister and Security Council Secretary Anatoly Kinakh. However, Ekhanurov himself yesterday said the following concerning his possible participation in the new government: “I would not like to join the government in which I wouldn’t be Prime Minister.”
In his turn, the Regionals position Evgeny Kushnarev as an alternative for Yanukovich, more agreeable for President Yushchenko and Our Ukraine. He is among the most active supporters of accepting pro-president members into the government coalition. Last weekend, he began thinking of a name for the new coalition if it is joined by Our Ukraine. “If we manage to organize the broad coalition, it will receive another name. Perhaps, it will be called a uniting coalition, or the coalition of national reunion,” speculated Kushnarev.
It is Kushnarev who has been making loud announcements recently, the purpose of which is to change the bias against the Party of Regions in the “orange” camp. Thus, he declared on Saturday “there should be only one state language in the country—Ukrainian.” Moreover, he suggested lowering the salary of those state officials who do not speak Ukrainian, and raising it for those who speak it fluently. One of the central campaign slogans of the Party of Regions was giving Russian the status of the second national language in Ukraine. What is more, Kushnarev was among organizers of deputies’ congress of local councils of East Ukraine in Severodonetsk in December 2004. The participants of the congress, Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov among them, demanded creating a new country—South-Eastern republic with the capital in Kharkov. Afterwards, the Prosecutor General’s Office accused Kushnarev of violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity and abuse of office. Moreover, he was even arrested for 72 hours for this case on “eastern separatism”.
Two plans
While the talks go on, both sides do not hesitate to show they do not trust each other, and prepare reserve airfields and retreat paths. Thus, the Supreme Rada yesterday ratified the resolution on holding a special plenary session of the Rada in the case it is dissolved by the president. “If the president initiates consultations on early terminations of the Rada’s powers, the Rada will urgently gather for a plenary session, without convocation,” said Kushnarev. “The president has repeatedly announced he will dissolve the Rada. So, we must decide how to say goodbye to each other, how to pack our things.” Yet, the Party of Regions does not believe in the possibility that President Yushchenko will really dare dissolve the parliament—formally, he can do it today.
Yushchenko, in his turn, tries to boost the formation of the Constitutional court. It is this court which may cancel the political reform re-distributing powers between the president and prime minister, and return the authority to Yushchenko which is already slipping away from him. Appointing new judges to the Constitutional court is one of the important conditions in the talks. Yet, the Regionals also bargain. “The Constitutional court will be created only after Prime Minister is appointed, because he should be present when they give their oaths,” said Yanukovich yesterday.
Anyway, everyone admits the bargaining is coming to its end. The deadline for the president to name the new Prime Minister expires early next week. So, he should hurry up to somehow influence the alignment of power in the new government.
Mikhail Zygar; Mustafa Nayem, Kiev
All the Article in Russian as of July 25, 2006
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