You're reading: Ukraine’s parliament deadlocks ahead of elections

The resignation of the speaker of Ukraine's parliament Volodymyr Lytvyn has paralyzed parliament ahead of elections scheduled for Oct. 28.

Following the adopting of a controversial language bill, which upgrades the status of the Russian language, on July 3 Lytvyn and parliament opposition vice speaker Mykola Tomenko resigned.

Both resigned in protest to the adoption of the language law, which is criticized by the opposition.
    
Although Lytvyn did not vote in favor of the law and pledged not to sign it, 19 out of 20 lawmakers in his People’s Party faction helped to adopt the bill.

Analysts say that Lytvyn’s resignation is a face-saving strategy aimed at his potential voters in the mostly Ukrainian-speaking Zhytomyr Oblast, located in the north of the country. “All this looks staged. After that Lytvyn could return to his Zhytomyr region as a hero,” Mykhaylo Pohrebynsky, a political analyst, reports RegioNews news website.

In the meantime, the parliament will remain idle until new speaker is elected, which is unlikely to happen until after parliamentary elections.

“The absence of the speaker in the parliament paralyzes the parliament as no legislation can take effect without the speaker’s signature,” said Kostyantyn Dykan, analyst at the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center think tank.

According to Ukrainian legislation, any law adopted by the parliament can not be passed on to the president to be signed in order to take effect before a parliament speaker puts his signature on it.

In order to elect a new speaker a simple majority is needed with two thirds of the parliament registered at the session. While the opposition is unable to prevent favorable vote, its more than a third deputies might block any such decision by not registering during sessions and, thus, providing a quorum.

“I think the opposition is interested to block electing of a new speaker, as that way they can stop any possible changes into election legislation that could hurt their chances during elections,” he added.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, whose Party of Regions’ deputies proposed and voted in favor of the language law, says that early parliamentary elections could take place.

“Viktor Yanukovych did not rule out that if the parliament fails to stabilize, we would need to move on to the procedures for early parliamentary elections,” his press service quoted him as saying. “But I think that before starting this procedure, we have to exhaust all our measures.”

However, since elections are just four months away, early elections would not be possible earlier.

Razumkov’s Dykan says that early elections have no sense as the campaign has already started, forecasting the parliament to remain in the deadlock until after elections.

Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected]