Disorder in the house..

The ruling anti-crisis coalition has turned to president Yushchenko to sort out the mess in the VR caused by opposition deputies continually distrupting its functioning. They must be getting desperate - they have been busily dismantling his powers for months.

"The opposition have 'requalified[?] themselves into hooligans and bandits, and are utilizing populist slogans again," said indignant PoR fraction member Mykhaylo Chechetov. He expects law enforcement agencies will "provide an appropriate assessment of their actions."

Yesterday the deputy VR speaker, Adam Martynyuk announced that the 15 BYuT deputies who took control of the electricity switch gear panels in the VR building and who were switching the lights on and off [playing 'pretend thunder and lightning'?] would be criminally responsible for their actions. "I do not recommend you joke with this matter," he warned, rather unconvincingly.

The opposition are ostensibly demanding an emergency debate on the big housing and communal charge price hikes that have hit the country's citizens in recent days.

A Reuters report quotes opposition leader Yuliya Tymoshenko on the struggle between the PM and president: "This chaos has one name only: a constitutional crisis, when the president and the prime minister ... confront each other and their powers contradict each other. So Ukraine has ended up with two masters wielding executive power."

"There is only one way out of the constitutional crisis, the same used by all democratic countries when such a situation occurs, and that is an early parliamentary election," she said.

According to Serhiy Teryokhin, one of Tymoshenko's closest associates and former economics minister in her cabinet, in the event of early elections, despite their current rapprochement, it is hardly likely that NU and BYuT will come together on one list. "I can say the exasperation inside BYuT with the actions of individual members of NU is just too great, and unfortunately is not reducing with time. The hope that 'the dear friends' will give up their further political careers is an illusion."

He also says Yuliya T. is undecided whether to stand for election in the 2009 presidential elections. It depends on how the constitutional reforms pan out.
So now it is clear what BYuT are really after.