The Prime Minister reported on the government's achievements

agenda

Yesterday an extended meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers took place, at which the results of its work for the six months were summed up. For three hours, Viktor Yanukovych spoke about the economic achievements of his government and listened to officials who confirmed his words. Against this background, two speakers stood out: the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of the fifth convocation, Alexander Moroz, who made an emotional speech dedicated to the early elections, and the head of the Poltava Regional Council, Alexander Udovichenko, who unexpectedly recalled the prime minister’s criminal past.

Ministers, governors, heads of regional councils and heads of parliamentary committees began to gather in the meeting room of the Cabinet of Ministers half an hour before the appointed time. It became known the day before that Viktor Yushchenko would not come (see yesterday's Kommersant). In this regard, seats on the presidium were provided only for Viktor Yanukovych and Alexander Moroz, whose participation in the extended meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers, according to Kommersant's information, was one of the reasons that Mr. Yushchenko refused to attend.

Not all those invited came to the meeting. In particular, Defense Minister Anatoly Gritsenko was not in the hall, who, like Foreign Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, went on vacation to participate in the election campaign of the Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense bloc. However, Mr. Yatsenyuk still found time to attend a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers, which surprised his colleagues.

- Look! The Minister of Foreign Affairs came in person! - the head of the Ministry of Justice Alexander Lavrynovych was surprised when he saw the tanned Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

- Certainly! How would you manage here without me? - the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs retorted.

According to the agenda, the government meeting was planned to be devoted to a report on the work for the first half of the year. But Viktor Yanukovych decided to expand the reporting period. He began his speech with a story about how his predecessors, Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuri Yekhanurov, worked ineffectively.

“When we arrived at the government building, the economy was exhausted,” the prime minister complained. “Failure to implement the state budget, the largest state monopolies were on the verge of bankruptcy, the proceeds from privatization were eaten up, the rate of economic growth slowed down, investors lost confidence in us...

The enumeration of the problems took several minutes, after which Mr. Yanukovych began to describe how his government heroically overcame all the difficulties created by its predecessors. Among his achievements, Viktor Yanukovych noted the harmonization of relations with NATO, and Ukraine’s victory in the competition to host the final part of Euro 2012, and the signing of an agreement on visa facilitation with the EU, which the prime minister for some reason called “valid”, although in fact it will come into force only after ratification by Parliament.

The rest of the speakers largely echoed the theme of the current government's achievements. Only representatives of the regions recalled shortcomings in his work, and even then they were talking about local difficulties. For example, the head of the Kyiv regional administration, Vera Ulyanchenko, spoke about the problems associated with the taxation of enterprises in the Chernobyl zone. The head of government reacted calmly to these reproaches. And only one speaker - Chairman of the Poltava Regional Council Alexander Udovichenko - made Viktor Yanukovych blush.

- I ask you to turn to face us! You are, to a certain extent, our fellow countryman in Kremenchug! - he addressed the head of government.

As is known, Viktor Yanukovych is connected with Kremenchug by only one episode of his life: in the late 1960s, the future prime minister served a sentence there in a local juvenile colony. So the argument of the head of the regional council was, to say the least, incorrect.

During the meeting, the Prime Minister's Office handed over a note to the Presidium stating that the President had signed the fourth decree on holding elections (see pages 1, 2). After this, Alexander Moroz took the floor. Either in connection with the message, or for some other reason, Mr. Moroz looked extremely agitated, spoke loudly and sometimes broke into a scream. The speaker's speech was chaotic: he either praised the government, then criticized it, spoke either about the inadmissibility or the need to hold parliamentary elections...

“But our political union will only strengthen after the elections!” We will not allow the election results to be rigged! We won't give it!!! - Alexander Moroz shouted, addressing either the audience or Viktor Yanukovych.

Even the prime minister was surprised by the speaker's emotional speech. He seemed to be trying not to breathe so as not to attract the attention of his neighbor. And when Mr. Moroz finished, Viktor Yanukovych exhaled noisily and, with obvious relief, invited the next speaker to the podium.

The extended meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers lasted three hours, after which representatives of parliament, regional leaders and the head of government himself left the hall, and the ministers continued the meeting chaired by First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. There were no high-profile issues on the agenda, so the closed part of the meeting passed without discussion and lasted no more than an hour.

SERGEY Kommersant-SIDORENKO

Viktor Yanukovych in the period