Translated material
Like the Pope
Ukrainians elected a speaker until late at night and destroyed the coalition
Yesterday the Rada's work brought sensations. The first sensation was the unblocking of the work of the Rada, which the opposition, led by Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions, had kept under siege for nine days. The second sensation is the collapse of the ruling “orange” coalition of the Socialist Party, Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and Our Ukraine.The “gravedigger” of the coalition turned out to be the leader of the socialists, Alexander Moroz, who, contrary to coalition obligations, did not support the candidacy of “our Ukrainian” Petro Poroshenko for the post of speaker. Fellow coalition members accused Moroz of betraying the ideals of the “Orange Revolution” and a separate agreement with the Party of Regions and the Communist Party to create a new parliamentary majority. In exchange, Moroz allegedly expected to receive the post of speaker. “If the SPU wants to create a coalition with the Party of Regions, our doors are open,” Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych said yesterday. The Rada elected the speaker until late at night, because, as if following the example of the Catholic Church, which locks up cardinals until the election of the Pope, it decided not to stop meetings until the speaker is elected.
In general, the Rada yesterday considered three candidates for the post of speaker - socialist Alexander Moroz, “our Ukrainian” Petro Poroshenko and “regionalist” Mykola Azarov. All three politicians are well-known political figures in Ukraine. Moroz in the mid-90s was the speaker of the Rada and Kuchma’s main opponent. It was at the instigation of Moroz that the “cassette” scandal involving the use of Major Melnichenko’s films began six years ago. Poroshenko is a well-known businessman, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council in 2005, one of the influential leaders of the presidential bloc. Azarov - Deputy Prime Minister of the government in 2003-2004, head of the political council of the Party of Regions. (Initially, only two candidates were supposed to participate in the voting - from the ruling coalition and the opposition. The only candidate of the “orange troika” was Poroshenko, but when the socialists violated the coalition agreement, Poroshenko, outraged by this, withdrew his candidacy.)
Moroz himself explained the violation of coalition agreements with intentions to save the country from ruin. “My conscience is clear before Ukraine. I understand what I’m getting into,” he assured from the parliamentary rostrum. He hinted that Ukraine’s enemies had developed a scenario for the rapid collapse of the “orange” coalition and the discrediting of its leaders within two to three months. “This design” supposedly assumed the simultaneous nomination of two long-time enemies - Tymoshenko and Poroshenko - to the posts of prime minister and speaker, so that the situation of 2005 would be repeated. Then Prime Minister Tymoshenko accused the Secretary of the National Security Council Poroshenko of corruption, which led to a crisis. If the coalition repeats its previous experience and the country “receives an explosive mixture,” then “the disaster will repeat itself, but with worse consequences,” Moroz said. He made it clear that after the election of a “non-Orange” speaker, the composition of the coalition may change and Tymoshenko will not receive the post of prime minister.
It was striking that the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and Our Ukraine were completely at a loss. Tymoshenko refused to comment on the situation, asking “to give her time to understand what is happening.” Both parties immediately refused to participate in the vote for speaker. “So far, no one can really explain what is happening. I cannot understand the motivation of Alexander Moroz,” political scientist and BYuT deputy Dmitry Vydrin told Vremya Novostey. There are several versions of the development of events. As Ukrainian political scientist Andrei Ermolaev told VN, Moroz’s demarche is a purely emotional gesture, and not the machinations of “regionals.” He believes that it is too early to talk about the collapse of the “orange” coalition. But the head of the Ukrainian Institute of Global Strategies, Vadim Karasev, thinks differently. “There was definitely an anti-coalition coup in the Rada. The Party of Regions and the SPU acted synchronously to disrupt the election of Poroshenko as speaker and put a barrier on the path to the election of Tymoshenko as prime minister,” Mr. Karasev told VN. Late last night, not a single expert undertook to make predictions about who would become the Speaker of the Rada, “since secret voting is an unpredictable matter.”