Presidential ally to head Rada
Dec 6, 2007 at 00:02y wonder Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the parliament’s chair.
The newly formed Democratic Forces Coalition elected Yatsenyuk with its slim one-vote parliamentary majority of 227 votes, passing its first big test after emerging last week to a chorus of doubt that it could hold together and secure critical votes.
Though possessing no experience as a legislator, Yatsenyuk has enjoyed a meteoric rise in Ukrainian politics in the last two years because of his youth, bureaucratic talent, and non-polarizing appeal, observers said.
“Yatsenyuk has positioned himself as a professional bureaucrat who upholds the letter and spirit of the law,” said Yuriy Syrotiuk, a political analyst at the Kyiv-based Open Society Foundation, which is financed by American, British and Polish grants.
“He will lead the parliament independently and will try to show he’s trying to have constructive relations with all branches of government.”
In supporting Yatsenyuk’s candidacy, President Viktor Yushchenko indicated he sought a parliamentary chair who has wide appeal and isn’t beholden to any particular political or business interests.
“I am convinced Arseniy Petrovych will be a talented speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, who feels with every fiber of his body that he is speaker of the entire parliament, and not just the majority or several political forces,” Yushchenko said.
Yushchenko preferred Yatsenyuk as parliamentary speaker over Vyacheslav Kyrylenko because the latter was beholden to Yulia Tymoshenko and leaned toward her camp, particularly after receiving her support for his candidacy, Syrotiuk said.
Yatsenyuk, on the other hand, will conduct himself free from Tymoshenko’s influence, he said, and he’s independent enough to pursue his own agenda apart from the president.
“Yatsenyuk will likely play his own game and carry out his own politics,” Syrotiuk said.
With Yatsenyuk’s selection, Yushchenko not only restricted Tymoshenko’s influence in parliament, but also succeeded in quelling infighting within the pro-presidential Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense between two sub-factions vying for power, said Oleksandr Lytvynenko, an analyst at the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Research, which is funded by Western government and non-governmental organizations.
“Yatsenyuk is not just a compromise figure for all political forces, but those represented within the coalition itself,” he said. “In this way, the coalition was consolidated.”
Yatsenyuk’s selection will also return stability to a Ukrainian parliament riddled with strife ever since Oleksandr Moroz abandoned the Orange forces and formed a Russian-oriented coalition in July 2006, observers said.
Some of that strife was apparent throughout the Dec. 4 parliamentary session in which the opposition led by the Party of Regions opposed Yatsenyuk, but offered no nomination of its own for the parliamentary chair.
Worried that their hairline majority could fail to muster enough votes supporting Yatsenyuk’s candidacy, the democratic forces were in talks throughout the day with the Communist Party of Ukraine to strike a deal. But the talks fell through and the pro-Western forces decided to elect the speaker on their own.
Lawmakers from the Party of Regions, parliament’s biggest faction, declared their opposition to Yatsenyuk’s candidacy, though they supported him eight months earlier for foreign affairs minister.
Prior to the vote, some observers suspected the Party of Regions would try to undermine the secret ballot vote by swaying individual deputies of the coalition with bribes or backroom deals.
If such attempts were made, they weren’t successful, and instead the Regions Party resorted to petty obstructionist antics.
Among these included Deputy Vladyslav Lukyanov calling for the arrest of temporary presidium chair Oleksandr Turchynov, accusing him of falsifying a procedural vote, and Vasyl Kyselyov tearing the secret ballot of a Tymoshenko Bloc deputy during voting.
The Party of Regions’ display of opposition wasn’t related to Yatsenyuk’s candidacy, but its discontent with the emergence of the Democratic Forces Coalition, Razumkov Center’s Lytvynenko said.
“Yatsenyuk isn’t the worst variant for the Party of Regions,” said Vadym Karasiov, director of the Kyiv-based Institute of Global Strategy.
“It opens the opportunity for a more compromising structure of parliament. Yatsenyuk is an operator of compromise.”
To further demonstrate the government’s new spirit of compromise, Tymoshenko offered concessions her faction didn’t have when it was in the opposition, including a vice prime ministership and chairmanship of 12 of 26 committees.
Although such traditions were in place during the era of President Leonid Kuchma, they were discarded by the parliament led by Moroz.
Tymoshenko played an active role in Yatsenyuk’s selection, largely because her election as prime minister depended on an Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense politician becoming speaker, particularly someone who isn’t pre-disposed against her.
Tymoshenko said a vote on her candidacy should come within two weeks. According to Ukraine’s Constitution, the president has 15 days to consider a candidacy for prime minister.
Addressing reporters after the vote, Kyrylenko said the coalition would submit its nomination of Tymoshenko as prime minister the next day, giving the president two weeks to nominate or reject her candidacy to parliament.
As his response, Yushchenko said on Dec. 5 that critical laws must be passed before a vote on Tymoshenko’s candidacy, particularly the 2008 budget. The president is also pushing for laws liberalizing agricultural land. He wants the moratorium on agricultural land sales to be lifted starting next year.