Arseniy Yatsenyuk will remain Ukraine’s prime minister after members of parliament voted during a special meeting on July 31 not to accept his resignation.
Only 16 out of 311 lawmakers present in the Verkhovna Rada voted for Yatsenyuk’s resignation, bringing to an end a political mini-crisis – the first since the new government took power following the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
After a strange week in which Yatsenyuk appeared at Cabinet meetings alongside his deputy, Volodymyr Groysman, who had been tapped as acting prime minister, he briefly thanked lawmakers for their support and promised that “Ukraine will never experience default” under his governance.
Yatsenyuk announced his resignation on July 24 after the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) and Svoboda factions left the ruling coalition in parliament, opening the way for snap parliament elections in the fall. Yatsenyuk was also infuriated with lawmakers’ refusal to vote for a number of key economic draft laws proposed by the government, including those required by the International Monetary Fund to receive financial assistance.
“I have nothing to pay wages of policemen, doctors, teachers; nothing to buy a rifle with, nothing to fuel an armored personnel carrier with,” he then said.
President Petro Poroshenko urged Yatsenyuk to stay on as prime minister. On July 24, Poroshenko held a meeting with Yatsenyuk, after which Oleksandr Danyliuk, the president’s representative in government, said the president wanted Yatsenyuk to stay at his post at least until parliamentary elections likely to be held in October.
“The president worked here as kind of Yatsenyuk’s psychoanalyst,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta political think tank joked.
Over the course of the week, both the president and prime minister held talks with leaders of parliament factions to find common ground on major legislative initiatives, including the budget law and changes to the tax code. Both bills were approved on July 31 with more than 300 votes in favor.
Parliament also ratified agreements with Australia and the Netherlands to allow the countries to send some 950 armed personnel to secure the crash site of downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in embattled Donetsk Oblast.
“Arseniy Petrovych (Yatsenyuk) agreed to our proposals (to these bills),” said Oleksandr Myrnyi of Svoboda Party.
“Parliament can and it is ready to work when the government is set to discuss (matters),” said Vitaly Kovalchuk, leader of UDAR party faction.
Surprisingly, many opposition politicians from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions – reportedly after long discussions inside the faction – decided to vote against Yatsenyuk’s leave. “This is not the time to run away from responsibility. There is a war in the country,” party member Hanna Herman said.
But the question remains whether parliament will show the same unity in voting for other critical bills while at the same time gearing up for snap parliamentary elections.
With only three months until voters go to the polls to elect new lawmakers, politicians are likely to become preoccupied with their future in parliament and underestimate the importance of voting for non-populist reforms that the country urgently needs, analysts say.
Fesenko believes the discussions between Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk this week included also plans for a future political alliance.
“I think that in context of this political crisis Yatsenyuk’s political future was also discussed. I mean that Yatsenuyk may appear in Poroshenko’s party list,” Fesenko said, adding that he did not rule out the current prime minister heading the president’s party list during the elections.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected].
