Supporters of Ukraine's jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko disrupted a speech by President Viktor Yanukovich on Tuesday, raucously chanting "Freedom for Yulia!" and setting the scene for a stormy October parliamentary election.
About 10 deputies from her Batkivshchyna party leapt to their feet, unfurling a banner bearing Tymoshenko’s portrait, and began a drumbeat chant as Yanukovich took his place at the rostrum to deliver a traditional speech marking the start of a new parliamentary season.
They kept up a noisy barrage for 30 minutes while Yanukovich, raising his voice to be heard, exhorted opposition parties to end street protests and prepare for the vote.
Parliament has become a focal point for rowdy protest in Ukraine since Yanukovich came to power in the ex-Soviet republic two years ago.
In May 2010, opposition deputies hurled smoke bombs in parliament in protest against a deal extending the stay of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Ukraine.
But a direct protest against a Ukrainian president while making a traditional address to parliament was unusual and Tuesday’s action suggested difficult times ahead in the run-up to the October poll.
Tymoshenko, 51, a charismatic twice-serving former prime minister, was jailed in October for seven years on a charge of abuse of office linked to a 2009 gas supply deal with Russia which she brokered while in power.
The Yanukovich leadership says the deal left the country with an exorbitant price for gas which is now a millstone on the Ukrainian economy. The United States and the European Union support the view of the political opposition that her trial was an example of selective justice and politically motivated.
Yanukovich, an old adversary of Tymoshenko who only narrowly beat her for the presidency in February 2010 after a vitriolic campaign, has repeatedly turned a deaf ear to Western calls for her to be released.
Law enforcement bodies have instead opened a string of new criminal cases against her.
From her prison cell in the eastern city of Kharkiv, Tymoshenko called on her party faithful to join forces with other opposition parties to oust Yanukovich’s Regions Party in the October poll.
"The key to removing the regime is the unity of the opposition … so as to divide the political ground between black and white, between good and evil between Ukraine and its occupiers," she said in a statement on her party’s web site.
"With all your force and capability … you must bring about a full, real and broad union of opposition forces in a single invincible monopoly to contest the 2012 parliamentary elections," she said.
Her political bloc holds 102 out of the 450 seats in a parliament dominated by Yanukovich’s Regions Party. But opinion polls show sagging popularity for the Regions while Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna has recovered some lost ground, thanks in large part to sympathy over imprisonment.
The question of opposition unity, however, is still problematic. Some opposition parties say they will join Batkivshchyna in agreeing a common candidate to take on the Regions in single-mandate constituencies that will account for half of the seats contested.
But Tymoshenko herself is a polarising figure who made many enemies with erratic policies when she was in power, and it remains to be seen whether all opposition parties will find common ground by next October.
Her supporters, led by daughter Yevgenia who took her case to Washington last week, have expressed fears for Tymoshenko’s health and say she is in constant pain from a recurring back problem. She is being held in a prison camp about 500 km (312 miles) east of Kiev.
After meeting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Germany on Saturday, Yanukovich signalled he might be ready to allow a group of foreign doctors to carry out an independent medical examination of Tymoshenko.
Yanukovich made no direct response to the pro-Tymoshenko protesters on Tuesday and stuck to his pre-written script despite their chanting.
"I want to appeal to opposition fractions: come back to parliament. It is not possible to save our country (by rallying) on public squares," he said.
