A session of Ukraine's new parliament collapsed amid chaos on Thursday when brawls erupted among opposition deputies and those of the ruling party over the election of parliamentary officials.
Groups of deputies wrestled with each other in a mass of
bodies around parliament’s main rostrum after the opposition
tried physically to block a vote on the ruling Party of the
Regions’ nomination for the position of speaker.
In equally rowdy scenes on Wednesday, opposition deputies
paralysed the session by encircling the rostrum and sabotaged
plans of the ruling coalition to ease Mykola Azarov into a
second term as prime minister.
On Thursday, opposition deputies swarmed around the rostrum
when a vote on the appointment of Vladimir Rybak, the Regions’
candidate for speaker, was about to be announced, and clashed
with a group of Regions deputies.
Azarov, a staid 64-year-old conservative re-nominated by
President Viktor Yanukovich for a new term as prime minister,
looked on bemused as deputies tussled and wrestled with each
other. The session was suspended until later in the day.
The opposition, which includes deputies loyal to jailed
former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, nationalists from the
far-right Svoboda and a liberal party led by boxing champion
Vitaly Klitschko, accuse the ruling coalition of trying to ram
through voting despite violations of parliamentary rules.
The vote on Azarov’s nomination will be an early test of the
support that Yanukovich, who is expected to bid for a second
term as president in 2015, commands in the new chamber.
The pro-business Party of the Regions and their allies
enjoyed a strong majority in the last parliament.
But though it is still the biggest single party, it lost
seats in the Oct. 28 election and faces an opposition which has
been re-energised by the arrival of the Svoboda nationalists and
Klitschko’s UDAR (Punch) party.
