Yatsenyuk resigns as parliament elections likely to be held in fall

 A vote this fall is favored by many Ukrainians who ushered in the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted Viktor Yanukovych, but left many of the disgraced ex-president’s followers and Communists in the Verkhovna Rada.

Parliament registered a bill that set early elections to the legislature for Sept. 28, but they aren’t expected to take place until the last Sunday in October. 

Volodymyr Groysman, the former mayor of Vinntysia, is expected to become acting prime minister.
Parliament will most likely be disbanded by the president soon.

The early election process was set in motion after two parties, Vitali Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform and the right-wing Svoboda, announced their formal departure from the ruling coalition. It was followed by the same statement by a group of independent lawmakers.

According to legislation, the president can disband parliament if a new coalition fails to form in the next 30 days. This development is unlikely, however, because it would mean that Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party would have to forge an alliance with the deeply unpopular former ruling Party of Regions as well as the Communists, who are facing a ban in the legislature.

The current parliament, which was elected in 2012, has mostly been dysfunctional, failing to agree on major policy issues.

On July 24, it failed to vote for a number of key laws presented by Yatsenyuk, some of which were requirements by the International Monetary Fund from which Ukraine secured a $17 billion bailout package. In a dramatic speech, Yatsenyuk partly blamed his resignation on the parliament’s failure to vote.

“The fact is that today you failed to vote for the laws, and I have nothing (with which) to pay wages of policemen, doctors, teachers; nothing to buy a rifle with, nothing to fuel an armored personnel carrier with. Today you failed to take a decision to fill the gas storages to allow us to live through the winter, to at last free ourselves from dependence on Russian gas,” he told the parliament. 

The prime minister said he sees no other way out but to resign. “When the coalition breaks down, the prime minister either has to resign or start consultations on forming a new coalition,” he said. Talks involving the Party of Regions and Communists is something “I am not going to do.”
What will next parliament look like?

In fact, the government has taken a number of major steps to ban the Communist Party altogether. Earlier this month, Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko filed a lawsuit based on what he referred to as “massive evidence” of the Communist Party’s financing of and helping terrorists in the east of Ukraine in the middle of the war.

The first hearing of the case took place on July 24. There are also 308 criminal cases pending against Communist Party members, another senior government official said.

Communist leader Petro Symonenko insisted that the government was simply cracking down on the opposition, and vowed to take part in the upcoming elections “in any case.” They are likely to be set for Oct. 26, according to Andriy Mahera, deputy head of the Central Election Commission.

But the Communists, like the once monstrous Party of Regions, might not even make it into parliament, according to the latest polls. According to a June 28-July 10 poll by Rating Group, Petro Poroshenko’s Solidarity party would get 23 percent of the vote, strengthening his grip on power.

The second most popular party is that of Oleh Lyashko, a charismatic populist who leads the Radical Party. It would receive 13 percent of the vote. Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna would get 11 percent, while Klitschko’s UDAR – 7 percent of support.

It’s still unclear what law will govern the next election and whether there will be a downward adjustment in the number of seats from the current 450, following the annexation of Crimea by Russia and an ongoing war in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. There are also major objections to the current mixed election system, when half the seats are filled through a proportional system, and the rest – via single-mandate elections.

Political upheaval comes as Kyiv appeals for military aid.

The political developments come amid growing appeals by Kyiv for international military assistance.
On July 24, Deputy Defense Minister Ihor Kabanenko held a meeting with U.S. military officials in which he appealed for military support for Ukraine’s army, according to a statement on the ministry’s website.

“The current situation testifies to clear Russian interference in Ukraine and its military support to terrorist groups active in Ukraine’s eastern regions… Right now, Ukraine’s armed forces need international support more than ever before,” Kabanenko told David Baldwin, commander of the California National Guard, a federally funded military force in the U.S.

On July 21, Ukraine’s finance minister revealed recently that the government’s military operation was costing the state $130 million a month.

A bill foreseeing the expansion of U.S. military and technical aid.