UKRAINE: Pro "Orange Revolution" parties sign a deal to form a coalition government, aimed at bringing Ukraine into the European mainstream

Record ID: 599396

  • Title: UKRAINE: Pro "Orange Revolution" parties sign a deal to form a coalition government, aimed at bringing Ukraine into the European mainstream
  • Date: 23rd June 2006
  • Summary: PARLIAMENT LOBBY
  • Embargoed: 8th July 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Ukraine
  • Country: Ukraine
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVACZCJA5ELU4F1JK2AVX0NED72V
  • Story Text: Parties backing the "Orange Revolution" on Thursday signed a deal to form a coalition government aimed at keeping the pro-Western administration on course for bringing Ukraine into the European mainstream.
    Yulia Tymoshenko, whose glamour and passion fired protesters during the 2004 mass upheavals, is to be reinstated as prime minister eight months after being sacked from the job.
    Accused for month of excessive ambition by pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko, she pledged judicial reform to eliminate corruption still rampant in the ex-Soviet state. She also called for "deep revision" of a New Year deal sharply raising the price of imported Russian gas.
    "Today we begin our fight to make our country democratic and free of corruption," Tymoshenko said, breaking the news of the deal bringing together Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party, her own bloc and the Socialist Party.
    There would be no more protection for business magnates who try to hide from the law, she said.
    "What our political force was prevented from doing after the Orange Revolution to make everyone equal before the law ... These times are over," she said.
    "The first reform we will conduct will be judicial to enable us to say that it is not the mafia who decides what is right or wrong or who gets a factory for nothing. This will be decided by the law, by legal procedures."
    Speaking to reporters during a later break, she called for a review on all gas deals with giant neighbour Russia.
    "I think all issues on gas supplies to Ukraine now require further deep revision and review," Tymoshenko said.
    Accused throughout her first term in office of impulsive actions that frightened investors, she pledged her government's economic policies would be "reasonable and predictable".
    The accord, nearly three months after elections, restores the unity of liberals who were behind the protests that helped propel Yushchenko to office late in 2004.
    The "Orange Revolution" allies have been at odds since Yushchenko, committed to nudging Ukraine towards European Union and NATO membership, fired the mercurial Tymoshenko less than eight months into her mandate as premier.
    Yushchenko's party's allies have proposed as parliamentary speaker confectionery and media magnate Petro Poroshenko -- Tymoshenko's most voluble critic during her time in office.
    The opposition immediately said a new government under Tymoshenko was doomed to fail, with the traditional split between the nationalist west and Russian-speaking east of the country bound to widen.
    "What was announced here today amounts to a coup staged by corrupt officials," Communist leader Petro Symonenko said.
    "It is the Ukrainian people who will suffer. The process of territorial disintegration will begin. It is inevitable given the policies pursued by an orange coalition already for a year and a half."
    Under new constitutional rules, the president has ceded many powers to parliament, which must form a majority within a 30-day deadline expiring this week. The assembly also chooses the prime minister and has a further 30 days to produce a cabinet line-up.
    The three parties won 243 of 450 assembly seats. Yushchenko, still a key player, accused Tymoshenko of excessive ambition before relenting and agreeing she could return as premier.
    The president -- as set down by the constitution -- is to be allowed to propose the defence and foreign ministers, who could well remain in their jobs. Tymoshenko's bloc wants the finance and energy ministries and those portfolios could change hands.
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