Self-Reliance party calls for new Ukraine gov’t, coalition agreement

Oleh Bereziuk, the deputy head of the Self-Reliance parliamentary faction, called for Ukraine’s ruling coalition to form a new government and redraft the coalition agreement, reported the pravda.com.ua news site. “We believe the government fulfilled its tasks. There are new tasks that should be fulfilled by new people,” he told fellow MPs at a coalition meeting on Jan. 25. He said the party’s decision to recall Agriculture Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko is aimed at initiating a rewriting of the coalition agreement.

Fatherland Parliamentary Faction Head Yulia Tymoshenko declined on Jan. 25 to take her turn in leading the coalition, calling the measure a profanation and requesting instead that Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Hroisman call for a meeting to discuss the planned constitutional amendments. “I don’t want to deceive the public. Decisions are being made not in the coalition, but by seven people behind doors and behind the backs of the coalition,” said Tymoshenko, who called for the coalition’s dismissal if a meeting isn’t held. The Self-Reliance parliamentary faction (26 MPs) is the third-largest in the current government while Fatherland (19 MPs) is the fifth-largest. The coalition now officially consists of 284 MPs, while a majority requires 226 MPs.

Zenon Zawada: The situation in Ukraine’s ruling coalition is approaching the absurd. All its participating parties want to capitalize off public discontent by calling for the Cabinet’s reshuffling, taking half-measures towards that goal, and threatening to abandon the coalition. Yet none of the five factions has formally left the coalition, largely because they all benefit from it being in place.

We reiterate our position that the coalition’s top two factions, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc led by the president and the People’s Front led by the prime minister, will do everything they can to prevent early elections and a Cabinet reshuffling, as is being called for by the three smaller factions. Yet they may be forced to undertake either measure as a means of appeasing public discontent. So far, this discontent is not at a critical mass but it can reach that level with the attempts to organize elections in Donbas.