Not Rada

The “unnatural” coalition of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) and the Party of Regions, as expected, did not form, and on October 8, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko held consultations with the leaders of parliamentary factions, after which his press secretary Irina Vannikova reported that all participants in the meeting agreed to hold early parliamentary elections. After this, the plenary meeting of the Verkhovna Rada, having opened, immediately closed for a break to continue “consultations in the format of faction leaders,” as Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced. However, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, according to faction member and vice-speaker Nikolai Tomenko, opposes early elections. He also denied the statement that the consultation participants agreed to hold early elections. “BYuT is not preparing for early elections,” Tomenko said. “We don’t have the appropriate legislation and there are no funds included in the 2008 budget to carry them out.” However, he did not rule out that Yushchenko would sign an “anti-people decree” on the dissolution of parliament. Vladimir Lytvyn, leader of the own name bloc, said Yushchenko had given deputies one more day to pass changes to several election laws so that there would be fewer grounds for appealing the results. In addition, the Rada must decide on the allocation of funds for the elections, said deputy leader of the Party of Regions faction Alexander Efremov. True, the first deputy leader of the faction, Alexander Lavrynovych, said that until the presidential decree there could be no talk about ensuring the next election campaign. It was decided not to consider the issue of financing the elections for now. By the way, he also refuted the statement of Yushchenko’s press secretary about the unanimity of the heads of factions on the issue of early elections, recalling that the Party of Regions has repeatedly demonstrated its rejection of such a prospect. On October 8, the President of Ukraine, after consultations with the heads of factions, went to Rome, and Tomenko suggested that the dissolution decree would be prepared when Yushchenko was abroad, and directly on October 8. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, for unknown reasons, did not appear at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. The leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine Petro Symonenko said that there were no consultations as such, and Yushchenko promised to think, but at the same time blamed the communists for the collapse of the coalition between BYuT and the pro-presidential faction “Our Ukraine - People's Self-Defense”. Symonenko only strengthened his opinion that Yushchenko should be impeached.