You're reading: Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk factions trying for two-party coalition

Parliament's two biggest factions, the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front, are only four votes short of the 226 majority needed to form a new coalition.

As soon as they lure the missing lawmakers, they can form a new government and put an end to the political crisis that has gripped the nation since mid-February.

Critics say such a small coalition will be too shaky as it will depend on political will of each coalition’s member – should anyone quit, the system is at risk again.

However, this seems to be the only way left for the Poroshenko Bloc to achieve its goal to replace Yatsenyuk as prime minister.

Earlier two more factions agreed to form the new ruling coalition – Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party and Yuliya Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna.

They had also voiced the readiness to consider the Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Groysman as a candidate for the prime minister’s seat, proposed by Poroshenko Bloc. But it didn’t work out. After the president’s faction denied the conditions set up by Lyashko, he said his party would stay in the opposition.

Tymoshenko factor

With Tymoshenko, the deal seemed to be sealed. With the 19 members of her faction, the coalition would number 235 lawmakers – which is 11 more than the required minimum of 226 lawmakers.

But at the last moment Tymoshenko said she would sign the coalition agreement only if 18 bills, initiated by herself and her allies, were guaranteed to be passed.

The problem is, the legislation pushed by Tymoshenko aims to ease the financial burden of regular Ukrainians at extreme measures that contradict the demands of the International Monetary Fund, the country’s main source of financial aid.

If adopted, the bills would threaten Ukraine’s chances to receive the third tranche of the IMF loan of $1.6 billion that was already delayed because of the coalition crisis.

Five of the bills on Tymoshenko’s list were submitted to the parliament in summer of 2015. Back then, the Ministry of Finance estimated that their adoption could cost Ukraine’s budget more than $5 billion, according to news outlet Liga.net. Ukrainian media immediately called them “the anti-IMF bills.” They seek to stop the growth of the utilities’ prices, increase pensions and state scholarships for college students.

Some say that the bills that seem impossible to pass are just a way for Tymoshenko to block the forming of the coalition while also looking good to the voters.

Tymoshenko, whose party did well in the local councils’ election in October, is the biggest advocate of the early parliamentary election, where she hopes to increase her party’s presence in the Verkhovna Rada.

At the same time, Ihor Lutsenko, a lawmaker with Batkivshchyna faction, says that all statements that these bills do not meet the IMF requirements are “fantasies.”

“Very often, when someone says that Europe won’t accept something, it’s really just a matter of negotiations,” he told the Kyiv Post on March 31. He added that Ukraine should not follow each condition, set up by the IMF.

According to Lutsenko, all talks with Batkivshchyna have been paused since they set their demands on March 29.

Emergency headhunting for MPs

Instead, the Poroshenko Bloc started to draw in new members, aiming to set the coalition without the help of Tymoshenko or Lyashko. On the morning of March 29 the faction numbered only 135 lawmakers, which, when added to the People’s Front 81 members, left the two factions only 10 votes short from the coveted majority.

During the day, three lawmakers joined the Poroshenko Bloc. Oleksandr Bryhynets and Dmytro Belotserkovets replaced Yegor Firsov and Mykola Tomenko, two ex-members of the faction who were expelled from the Verkhovna Rada in controversial circumstances on March 28.

On the same day, the scandalous Oleh Barna returned to the Poroshenko Bloc. He was expelled from the faction after he awkwardly attempted to lift and pull Yatsenyuk from the parliament’s tribune as the prime minister was delivering his annual report on Dec. 11, 2015.

Next, several lawmakers joined the Poroshenko Bloc in an even more questionable way.

The three lawmakers who were expelled from Samopomich faction in 2015 joined the president’s faction on March 30 and March 31: Iryna Suslova, Pavlo Kyshkar and Viktor Kryvenko. The move was apparently unconstitutional.

Suslova was kicked out of Samopomich after she supported Viktor Shokin in a vote that made him Ukraine’s prosecutor general in February 2015. Kyshkar and Kryvenko were expelled after they voted for the changes to constitution on decentralization, another vote that Samopomich did not support.

Sergii Leshchenko, a lawmaker with the Poroshenko Bloc, lashed out at the faction’s leadership, saying that ex-members of Samopomich were brought to faction with the violations.

He and other critics cite the Constitution Court ruling from 2008 that said that a lawmaker elected on a party list has to stay in the faction of this party.

Kyshkar told the Kyiv Post that he understood that after this move his political career is over. However, he added, it was worth doing, as this is a chance to prevent the early parliamentary elections that Ukraine might face if the new coalition is not formed soon.

The previous coalition started falling apart after Batkivshchyna and Samopomich left it following the failed no-confidence vote on Yatsenyuk’s Cabinet on Feb. 16.

No harm in trying

After the Poroshenko Bloc lost hope to attract Radical Party and Batkivshchyna due to their unrealistic demands, it made an attempt to lure Samopomich, a faction of 26 lawmakers.

During the joint meeting of the two factions on March 31, the Poroshenko Bloc said it would meet the conditions set up by Samopomich in exchange for their signatures under the new coalition agreement.

With Samopomich, the coalition would reach 248 members.

Earlier Samopomich repeatedly required that the new independent prosecutor general is elected and transparent election legislation is adopted.

Olena Sotnyk, a lawmaker with Samopomich, told the Kyiv Post her faction did not agree. In her words, they could support the new coalition in its further moves, but “we’ve already been in coalition with them, the people did not change.”

According to Leshchenko, now the two biggest factions will “lure people in and form a coalition for two.”

Kyiv Post editor Olga Rudenko contributed reporting to this story.