Ukrainian lawmaker Yulia Tymoshenko led her opposition faction
out of parliament Thursday amid a persistent political crisis,
demanding the president dissolve the fractious legislature and call
new elections to keep the new pro-Russian parliamentary majority
from gaining power.
Tymoshenko vowed that her faction, the second largest in the
450-member parliament, would stay away from the legislature until
Tuesday when, under Ukraine's Constitution, President Viktor
Yushchenko can exercise his right to dissolve parliament if a new
government is not formed by then.
"We are leaving until July 25, the day when the president gets
his right to dissolve the parliament until the president dissolves
it," Tymoshenko said. At least 120 lawmakers immediately quit the
chamber, covering their seats with a giant blue-and-yellow
Ukrainian flag.
Yushchenko's former "Orange Revolution" rival, Viktor
Yanukovych, formed a majority coalition last week with the
Socialists and the Communists.
The new coalition has its power base in pro-Russian eastern
Ukraine, and some analysts have said it would slow Ukraine's march
towards the European Union and NATO.
The coalition dominated by Yanukovych's Party of Regions
proposed him as prime minister, but Yushchenko has so far refused
to make the nomination official. If there is no prime minister by
July 25, there will also be no government, and Yushchenko will be
empowered to dissolve parliament.
Yanukovych emerged from two-and-a-half hours of talks with the
president Thursday, saying that the issue of dissolving parliament
never arose.
He also expressed hope that Yushchenko would soon forward his
nomination to parliament. "I saw in the eyes of the president a
great wish, a great wish to unite our forces for me, that's
enough," Yanukovych said, when asked how the president responded to
his candidacy.
Yushchenko, whose party took a beating with a third-place
showing in the March parliamentary elections that sparked the
political standoff, has appeared reluctant to dissolve the
legislature a move that opponents would certainly cast as
destructive. Polls have shown that a majority of Ukrainians do not
want new elections, and they also signalled that Yushchenko's party
could do even worse if a new vote were held.
But the president has also seemed equally uneasy with having to
share power with Yanukovych, whom he defeated in a court-ordered
presidential re-run in 2004. Even if the president gains the right
to dissolve parliament, he is under no obligation to use that right
or to act immediately.
His spokeswoman, Iryna Gerashchenko, said Yushchenko has until
August 2 to consider whether to accept Yanukovych's candidacy.
Tymoshenko warned that if Yushchenko supports Yanukovych for
prime minister, she would consider it a "betrayal of Ukraine's
national interests."
(China Daily July 21, 2006)
