Yushchenko retained his ministers

Ukraine, where the powers of the president and prime minister are not clearly divided, is reaping the fruits of dual power. Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and the ruling Anti-Crisis Coalition of the Verkhovna Rada are trying to “cleanse” the government of ministers elected under the president’s quota, whose supporters have now gone over to the opposition.

Yesterday's report by two ministers - defense Anatoly Gritsenko and foreign affairs Borys Tarasyuk - caused a storm of emotions in the Rada. Deputies from the Our Ukraine presidential bloc even got into fights with their opponents. As a result, the decision was postponed until the next session (November 28 - December 1). According to the head of the Party of Regions faction, Raisa Bogatyreva, the fate of the ministers will be decided by consultations between the president and the prime minister, since the constitution does not answer all procedural questions.

Representatives of the Anti-Crisis Coalition believe that the president will make concessions to the prime minister on important political issues in order to retain both ministers. The very fact of the ministers’ report to the Rada gave Viktor Yanukovych tactical advantages. The question is what tactics the president will choose - concessions or confrontation. “Yushchenko will not make any political concessions to the prime minister,” Vadim Karasev, head of the Ukrainian Institute of Global Strategies, told Vremya Novostey. “Since the procedure for these resignations is not written out in the constitution, the president will most likely ignore the decision of the Rada and will not fire his ministers.”

The government officially accuses ministers of unsatisfactory performance of their duties. Viktor Yanukovych said that law enforcement agencies have questions for the Minister of Defense due to financial irregularities in the department. As for Tarasyuk, the prime minister believes that because of the head of the Foreign Ministry, on November 6 in Kyiv his meeting with the Secretary General of the Council of Europe Terry Davis was disrupted. The Secretary General “stayed late for lunch with the Minister of Foreign Affairs,” Yanukovych explained. But there are other complaints against Tarasyuk, including the fact that his relations with his colleagues from Moscow are not very good.

“Irresponsible Tarasyuk thinks that he is doing bad to Yanukovych, but he is doing bad to the country,” the prime minister stated. One of the leaders of the Party of Regions, Taras Chornovil, spoke even more harshly: Boris Tarasyuk is “absolutely inadequate to the civilized norms of the diplomatic service.”

Svetlana STEPANENKO, Kyiv, Ivan SOLOVIEV