Ukraine’s parliamentary coalition was on the brink of collapse on Feb. 18 after its third-largest faction, the Self-Reliance party (26 MPs), declared it was exiting. In its statement, the party leadership accused the coalition’s two largest parties – the Petro Poroshenko Bloc and People’s Front led by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk – of betraying the EuroMaidan and Ukrainian soldiers by colluding with an “oligarch coup” to keep the status quo of corruption and resistance to reforms. Among its demands were new elections based on entirely open party lists, without single-mandate districts.
The same day, the fifth-largest coalition faction, the Fatherland party (19 MPs), submitted its official statement to the parliamentary speaker withdrawing its membership in the coalition. Without these two factions, the Poroshenko Bloc and People’s Front fall nine votes short of a majority needed (of 226 MPs) to keep the coalition alive.
The fourth-largest coalition member, Oleh Liashko’s Radical Party (21 MPs), claimed to have left the coalition on Sept. 1, but certain coalition MPs said this week the Radical Party is still a de-jure member as no official exit statement had been submitted. Nonetheless, Liashko was in talks to renew the coalition with his party’s involvement with all the main power brokers in recent days, including the president.
Zenon Zawada: The government is scrambling to do all it can to resuscitate this coalition that’s in critical condition. The key players are not only acting in their own self-interest, which involves preserving the current status quo of corruption and resistance to reforms. They are acting in the interests of the West, which wants stability in Ukraine at all costs, even with the lingering corruption. Western players don’t believe early elections will change much under the current conditions.
In the next three weeks, official announcement of the coalition split is very unlikely, as no parliament sessions are scheduled for that time. This means the cabinet and the coalition will have a lot of time to agree on their future shape.
Even if this government is resuscitated, it will barely function and it will face a hostile parliament. If we said in December that the odds of early elections are slightly better than 50 percent in the first quarter, then we raise the likelihood of them being held to 90 percent by the fall. We also expect that Western governments will require new election laws that are being heavily circulated and advocated among Ukrainian reformers and pundits. It’s this very reason that Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk are clinging to the status quo.