Last chance

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko made it clear that the parliamentary faction “Our Ukraine – People's Self-Defense” (NU-NS) that supports him will not create a coalition with the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) and the Vladimir Lytvyn Bloc. Negotiations on the creation of this coalition have been ongoing in recent weeks, but have not been successful. Now, as MP from the NU-NS Anatoly Gritsenko put it, the president of the faction “did not direct the faction to create a coalition with the BYuT.”

Now Yushchenko is giving BYuT until the evening to create a coalition with Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions - a coalition that he recently called unnatural. If a coalition is not created, the president will dissolve parliament. According to Gritsenko, Yushchenko also mentioned the Communist Party as one of the participants in a possible (and most likely impossible) coalition.

Meanwhile, MP from the Party of Regions Boris Kolesnik told Interfax that there is no chance of creating a coalition with BYuT. And BYuT deputy leader Andrei Portnov said that negotiations with the Party of Regions are not planned. Tymoshenko accuses the Party of Regions of conspiring with Yushchenko to achieve early elections. At the same time, a meeting of the NU-NS is taking place, and, according to Portnov, if Yushchenko’s supporters decide that it is still necessary to create a coalition, BYuT is ready to work in it.

Tymoshenko unexpectedly announced that Yushchenko does not have the right to dissolve parliament before November 23, since, according to the Constitution, the Verkhovna Rada can be dissolved no earlier than a year after the start of work of the next composition. Previously, it was argued that the president has the right to dissolve parliament if within forty days from the collapse of the coalition it is not reassembled. However, First Deputy Speaker Alexander Lavrynovych, a member of the Party of Regions, said that the work of the Rada should be counted from September 30, 2007, when the elections took place.

Meanwhile, the head of the People's Self-Defense party, which is part of the pro-presidential bloc, Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, said that most of the NU-NS are in favor of re-establishing the coalition, but the chairman of the faction, Vyacheslav Kirilenko, is preventing this, since the president wants to remove Tymoshenko from the post of prime minister. Moreover, Lutsenko announced that he is no longer a member of the pro-presidential bloc. Let us remind you that members of the People's Self-Defense party, unlike Our Ukraine, did not leave the meeting room of the Verkhovna Rada when BYuT and the Party of Regions voted to limit the powers of the president.

The coalition between BYuT and NU-NS fell apart in early September, when BYuT, together with the Party of Regions, voted for a number of laws that significantly limited the powers of the president. Tymoshenko recently stated that her faction is ready to vote for the repeal of these laws in order to prevent early parliamentary elections.