Ukraine PM assures the parliament coalition still exists

Ukrainian prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told journalists on Feb. 19 that the coalition in the Ukrainian parliament still exists, de jure. According to Yatsenyuk, a split of the coalition can be only announced by the parliament speaker (who is a close ally of President Poroshenko). Following an unsuccessful vote for the dismissal of Yatsenyuk’s government on Feb. 16, two small coalition factions, Self-Reliance (26 MPs) and Fatherland (19 MPs), officially left the coalition. De-facto, the coalition today consists of two large factions, the pro-president BPP (136 MPs) and the pro-Yatsenyuk People’s Front (81 MPs), thus being 9 members short of the needed threshold for the coalition to exist (226 MPs). However, key power brokers claim that another small coalition faction, Lyashko’s Radical Party (21 MPs), did not officially leave the coalition (its leader Oleh Lyashko announced the exit back in September 2015).

According to Yatsenyuk, he and Lyashko met on Feb. 17 to discuss the future of the coalition. According to the pravda.com.ua news site, Lyashko was discussing the position of parliament speaker for himself, and some ministerial positions for his party in the reshuffled Cabinet. However, Yatsenyuk told journalists that Lyashko did not discuss any positions with him.

Lyashko himself called on the parliament to gather for an extraordinary session on Feb. 23, instead of having three weeks of no sessions, the Ukrainian News agency reported on Feb. 20.

Alexander Paraschiy: Given the key power brokers’ desire to save the coalition and the Cabinet headed by Yatsenyuk, it is important for them to persuade Lyashko to stay. Having a leverage in talks with major parliamentary factions, Lyashko will definitely try to gain a lot from his “golden share”. The Ukrainian parliament has three off-session weeks, which could be enough for all the sides to agree on a new format of the coalition and possibly on a “reloaded” Yatsenyuk government. Lyashko’s attempts to call an extraordinary session of parliament (during which a coalition split may be announced, if he insits on that) looks like an attempt to increase pressure on key power brokers and make them grant political concessions as soon as possible. All in all, we expect the coalition won’t split, as Lyashko will stay in. Though, it’s not clear what price the key power brokers will have to pay for preserving such fragile political stability.