Friday, November 2, was the last day that the Our Ukraine-People’s Self Defense (NUNS) bloc could collect signatures to support a “democratic” (orange) coalition with the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT). BYuT deputies have openly expressed their fear that disunity in NUNS will lead to an unstable orange coalition and a political crisis in 2008.
By last Friday, 69 of the 72 NUNS deputies had signed. The fact that three deputies have not signed is significant. As the orange coalition only has a slim majority of 228 deputies (156 BYuT + 72 NUNS) in the 450-seat Rada, a parliamentary motion for Tymoshenko to become prime minister would fail if the trio sat out.
The three absentees are National Security and Defense Council (NRBO) secretary Ivan Pliushch and two deputies from Trans-Carpathia, the only district NUNS won in the September 30 elections. The two—Ihor Kril and Vasyl Petiovka—are allies of the head of the presidential secretariat, Viktor Baloga, himself a native of Trans-Carpathia.
This situation is yet another indicator that NUNS would be an unstable partner in either the planned orange coalition or a theoretical grand coalition with the rival Party of Regions.
[...]
Although personal, economic, and ideological conflicts serve to dampen these groups’ support for Tymoshenko, gender cannot be ignored as an additional factor. Antipathy toward Tymoshenko from the president and within NUNS is also a product of unreformed gender relations inherited from the Soviet era.
If Tymoshenko is not elected prime minister, the resulting political turmoil would likely plunge Ukraine into crisis, as new elections could not be held for one year. For Yushchenko it is better to have Tymoshenko inside the government than her leading the opposition from the outside and launching what she has termed as “Plan B” —her presidential candidacy.
Dear LORD. What the frak are these dipshibbits thinking?!
Actually, after my furious initial reaction, I suspect that I know. I hope I am wrong. I keep telling my wife that you should never attribute malice when stupidity is the more likely suspect. However, that fits the American cultural paradigm, not a xSoviet one. Malice is far more likely to be involved here.
The Party of Regions is bribing, in one form or another, the 3 members of NUNS that are holding out. My bet is that this is Yanukovich's plan to keep the Prime Minister post by making the others unable to form a government. His promises to the parliamentarians are probably empty words, as my wife would say, in that he never intends on delivering anything other than perhaps some cash. He almost assuredly just wants to keep things a mess for another year, sit back and let the Orangers play fratricide and then when its constitutionally allowed, call elections (hmm, seems more an Italian strategy than Slavic, ahem). At that time he'll point to the Orangers incompetence and try to clean up in the election.
Oy.
On a slightly different note, our friend, Anatoly, who is a member of the Party of Regions formerly in Gorlovka, has made the leap to Kiev as some sort of ecology department member. We're kinda scratching our heads over this one since he's an expolice chief. I suppose he has some experience in the natural gas industry since he had at least some stations that sold it for automotive use.
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