Yanukovych takes control

Giving his first press conference since the March parliamentary elections, PR leader Viktor Yanukovych has imposed his authority on the drift in forming a parliamentary coalition. He pronounced that PR would 'bloc-up' with any other party in a governmental coalition, but he must be PM - he is not prepared to give up the PM's chair.

Other PR 'big-shots' have recently been a little 'off-massage' on this, but now Yanukovich has made his position clear.

He said that his party is ready to come together with NSNU, and believes this would provide the most effective coalition. Importantly, PR have commenced two-sided discussions on formation of a coalition, but [oddly] didn't specify with whom.

In principle, the orange parties would seem to be the most natural partners in any government, but an article in 'Svoboda' entitled 'Pipes and Chocolates, or an Akhmetov-Poroshenko coalition', illustrates what is happening at regional level, where local elections took place at the same time as parliamentary elections. In the Lviv oblast rada the NU chairman categorically refused to give up his position, even though BYuT received a greater mandate.

An analogous situation has occurred in Kyiv oblast rada where BYuT has the largest number of seats, but NU bloc has formed a union with PR. In Odessa the head of the NSNU branch has declared that there is a possiblity of a coalition with PR. And, typically for central Ukraine, in Golovansk, a town in Kirovograd oblast in a 46 seat council, BYuT-Socialists-NSNU had sufficient seats to form a majority, but in a vote to choose a 'rayi-soviet' chairman, a split occurred, and a Litvinite man who had held the position previously, was elected.

In the Zakarpattya oblast rada NU have done a deal with PR on co-operation, driving BYuT, and the Socialists and Litvinites into opposition. But now in the BYuT fraction itself there has split into two groups.

A similar sequence of events with splits and deals may well occur in the Parliament even after coalition negotiations are finally completed. Yushchenko is predicting these will drag on until mid June..