Ukraine’s political turmoil deepened on Feb. 18, as Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy’s Samopomich Party 26-member faction in parliament announced that it was withdrawing from the governing coalition.
Samopomich’s withdrawal came a day after Batkivshchyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko said her 19-member faction was quitting the coalition in the wake of parliament’s failure to dismiss the government of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Feb. 16.
Following the exit of Batkivshchyna and Samopomich, the remaining two coalition members, the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko (134 seats) and the People’s Front faction (81 seats), have only 215 seats by some estimates — short of a 226-seat majority. That means a new coalition will have to be formed. If not, fresh elections could be called after 30 days, something that the president and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, leader of the People’s Front, are trying to avoid.
Samopomich said it was calling on “all those lawmakers who don’t want to serve within kleptocratic and oligarch groups to leave their factions” and start preparing for early elections.
“It has become obvious that there’s a grand alliance, which includes part of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko Bloc, Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front and the ‘leftovers’ of the Party of Regions,” Samopomich faction leader Oleh Berezyuk said during a briefing in Kyiv on Feb. 18. Berezyuk said this alliance was an “an attack” on the country’s political system.
Commenting on his faction’s decision, Berezyuk said that the no-confidence vote in the government, which was backed by 194 lawmakers, 32 votes short of a majority, had “totally destroyed” the pro-European parliamentary coalition.
From now on, Samopomich will be in “opposition to the kleptocratic power,” lawmaker Yegor Sobolev said. The lawmakers also decided to boycott the parliament’s morning session on Feb 18.
Political analyst Vitaly Bala of the Situations Modeling Agency said Samopomich’s move was “the only good decision.”
“There would be no other legal way to dismiss Yatsenyuk’s government until autumn at least, so now we have a de-facto collapse of the coalition,” Bala told the Kyiv Post. “Since Yatsenyuk didn’t resign, what they did was the right move.”
There’s a chance for lawmakers “to save” themselves after what Bala called the “disgraceful” no-confidence vote – by finding enough support to form a new coalition within 30 days of the majority coalition’s collapse.
The 21-member Radical Party, if it could be tempted into a coalition, could provide a majority, with the three factions having 236 votes altogether.
Commenting on the latest moves inside the coalition, Yatsenyuk said he “feels sorry for those who don’t have political responsibility.” The prime minister also said he plans to consult with the president, his faction and Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko “to save the country.”
Meanwhile, three independent lawmakers elected in single-mandate constituencies – Dmytro Dobrodomov, Oleh Musiy and Bohdan Matkivsky – announced on Feb. 18 that they were leaving the governing coalition.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].
