Home Page  >  Focus on Ukraine  >   

Focus on Ukraine, June 23-29, 2008

June 30, 2008
Focus on Ukraine

 

The Democratic Initiatives Foundation follows political events in Ukraine with the aim of monitoring the pre-election promises of the country’s leading political forces that won seats in the parliament as a result of the early elections to the Verkhovna Rada on September 30, 2007. The monitoring is conducted within the framework of the project “Where are our political leaders taking us?”


June 23

 

Leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine stated at the party’s 42nd congress on June 21 that its faction will not participate in the formation of a new coalition in the Verkhovna Rada of the 6th convocation.  Symonenko believes that any possible variant of unification will put certain terms to a political party.

 

June 24

 

The speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, the premier and leaders of the coalition factions held talks on the current situation in the Ukrainian parliament.
 Recall that last week the work of the parliament was blocked. The Party of Regions is demanding an official announcement about the dissolution of the parliamentary coalition. The Presidential Secretariat feels that the speaker of the parliament must the key figure in the renewal of the work of the legislature.
 During consultations VR Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk proposed that the parliament unite in reviewing the draft law on the basis of domestic and foreign policy up to 2010, the issue of preparations for Euro 2012 and amendments to the budget.
 Premier Yulia Tymoshenko declared the need to approve the government program that will give the Cabinet of Ministers a year of immunity from dissolution.

 

In response to the official position of Moscow that it is prepared to increase the fee for stationing of its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, the spokesman of Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vasyl Kyrylych said the fleet will sail home in May 2017, when its stationing expires in accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine.
 The current fee for renting a dock is US $98 mn, which is written off of Ukraine’s national debt.

June 25 

 

CVU Chairman of the Boad Ihor Popov stated that the Committee of Voters of Ukraine predicts a substantial reformatting of the spectrum of political parties in Ukraine.
 He named several variants of the solution to the current political crisis: maintaining the current state of affairs, achieving tactical agreements with a constant aggravation of the situation up until the next presidential election, reformatting of the coalition in the current composite of the parliament and the announcement of early elections.
 Popov believes the last scenario is the most probable, which could enter the active phase in the fall of 2008 with the announcement of elections this December.

 

Secretary of the Political Council of the Socialist Party of Ukraine Stanislav Nikolayenko believes that only early parliamentary elections can reinstate the constitutionality of the political processes in the country.
 In his opinion, given the current situation in the government mature Ukrainian voters will not make the same mistake of voting for the oligarchs.

June 26 

 

President Viktor Yushchenko issued directives to Premier Yulia Tymoshenko prior to talks with Russia on the gas issue scheduled for Saturday in Moscow. In them it is delineated that the government must clearly set the volumes of gas shipments to the domestic market and gas delivered to Europe. The price of natural gas must be set by September 15.

June 27 

 

The Constitutional Court made public its ruling on the imperative mandate to members of parliament that they do not have the right to leave one faction in favor of another. Similarly, parliamentarians do not have the right to abandon the political party or faction that they were elected to.
 Meanwhile, a decision of the managing body of a party or bloc of political forces is required in order that a deputy be stripped of his or her powers should they decide to leave the faction they were elected to.      

 

 

      

 

 

 

 



Begin   Previous page   1   2   3   4   5   Next Page   End
^ Top