Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front on Nov. 3 said its leader would remain prime minister following the second round of talks on a new government coalition.
Yatsenyuk and Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, believed to be President Petro Poroshenko’s preferred candidate, are the leading contenders for the job. The talks on a coalition are being held by the People’s Front, the Poroshenko Bloc and Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy’s Samopomich, which are expected to have 132 seats, 83 seats and 33 seats in the newly elected parliament, respectively. These 248 seats form a decisive majority in the 450-seat legislature.
“I’m 100 percent sure that the candidacy of prime minister proposed by the coalition will be Arseniy Yatsenyuk,” said Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, a member of the People’s Front, as cited by Interfax-Ukraine.
But Hanna Hopko, No. 1 on Samopomich’s list, said by phone that the candidacies of prime minister and other ministers had not been discussed during the negotiations.
The next round of coalition talks is scheduled for Nov. 6.
The agreement may be initialed before the Verkhovna Rada’s first meeting, which will be held no later than on Dec. 15, and signed after it, said Vitaly Kovalchuk, a member of the Poroshenko Bloc, LigaBusinessInform reported.
Kyrylenko said that the coalition agreement’s text would be 90 percent ready by the end of this week.
The text may cover a wide range of topics. Reforms that the parties are discussing include the electoral reform, including open party lists, decentralization, bolstering judicial independence, support for small and innovative businesses, stripping members of parliament of immunity and subordinating local police to municipalities, Hopko said.
Elaborating on the new coalition’s principles, Kyrylenko said that each party would have one vote. Crucial decisions must be subject to approval by all parties or a qualified majority, he added.
Other principles include making coalition forming more public and avoiding decision making behind closed doors, Hopko said.
“We must put an end to the old format of coalition forming,” she said. “We should focus not on backdoor dealings and divvying up ministerial portfolios but on concrete tasks.”
Hopko said that Samopomich would be part of the coalition but did
not intend to get any ministerial portfolios.
Samopomich also insists that there should be no political quotas in the
Cabinet, with the distribution of jobs based on professionalism rather than
party affiliation, she said.
The new principles may stem from a desire to break with the heritage of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s authoritarian regime.
The participants of the talks have agreed to exclude from the coalition the Opposition Bloc, a group of former Yanukovych allies, and those who voted for the Jan. 16 “dictatorial laws,” which restricted civil liberties and triggered his overthrow on Feb. 22. But all pro-European parties represented in parliament may participate.
“Now three parties are in talks but we are open for (former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s) Batkivshchyna and (Oleh Lyashko’s) Radical Party if they want to join,” Hopko said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
