You're reading: Yatseniuk: Opposition planned to disrupt vote on language bill, but it acted not in the best way

The opposition cannot explain why it failed to realize its plan to resist the adoption at first reading of the law on the principles of state language policy.

"I know that 30 [voting] cards were to be removed [from voting machines] and I know that we had to fight. And I know that today the opposition did not act in the best way. This is a very serious lesson for us," Front for Change Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk said at a press briefing on June 5, when asked why opposition lawmakers, on the order of BYT-Batkivschyna faction leader Andriy Kozhemiakin, failed to remove 30 voting cards of majority MPs from voting machines.

The deputy leader of the BYT-Batkivschyna faction, Oleksandr Turchynov, in turn, said that Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn had violated an agreement on the procedure for the consideration of this issue in the parliament’s session hall.

Turchynov noted that the language bill was to be the third issue submitted for consideration in the session hall, but that immediately after opening the morning session, Lytvyn had put this issue to the vote. He said that this order of the consideration of this issue should have served as a signal for opposition deputies to start blocking the parliament’s work.

"Lytvyn, under agreement with his owners, has moved this issue, and MPs simply did not understand that its consideration had already begun," Turchynov said.