PoR and BYut..

Today Rinat Akhmetov told journalists: "When two forces [PoR and BYuT] come together for the sake of values which take the country onto a qualitatively new level, I accept this positively."

At the same time he rejected the possibility that BYuT and PoR joining together in the Anti-Crisis-Coalition, or uniting on one electoral list.

"BYuT cannot unite with us. We have simply combined [our efforts]. Of course there cannot be one list," noted Akhmetov.

He also added, "Yuliya Volodymyrivna is a powerful politician - she has her opinions, we have ours. We are not going to unite our parties - that's nonsense."

Another article which caught my eye, entitled "War and peace - The main conclusion of the O.R." in 'Obozrevatel', develops the idea that Ukraine is becoming a politically bi-partisan state.

I've loosely translated portions:

"The main conclusion of the of the last two and one half years seems to be the that the revolution, turned out to be quite painless. No one (practically no one) was killed apart from "suicides" caused as consequence of fear, and not real threat. Promised wars did not take place, Lviv met Yanukovych [during his recent visit] peacefully, and Donetsk quietly accepted Yushchenko. Everyone has settled down.

After fulfilling his historical function - uniting the entire people against himself - the acting President has became superfluous. The stunning failure in 2006 of NU (a party that is a mere bluff, a chimera, that has politically 'fizzled out', split by internal divisions between the betrayed, and betraying), and also of national Litvinites, has shown that in a country no longer frightened, there's a demand nowadays only on the fringes for such parties.

There is left-of-centre Yuliya, who is always gaining points, and our right-of-centre leader (for the moment), who has learned by his errors, having mastered the skill not only to go for the break-through, ensure unity and demolish his enemies, but to also to depict solid respectability, and be prepared for co-operation, compromise, and tolerance.

Other minor parties will die out even more rapidly than their electorate, so it is only those two that are interested in the determining the rules of game which would guarantee rights to the loser.

They have to fight between themselves extremely carefully though, so as not to damage one another too seriously, but without easing up, since a too-obvious truce would not be forgiven.

But for the country there is no harm in such a spectacle. Firstly, it is cheerful to watch, and secondly, a harmless democracy remains in place, no-one is harmed, so stability emerges - just as in America.

Certainly, if an interloper appeared into the second second round of any voting, it's doubtful they could obtain more 6-8% of the votes. So it seems we are doomed to a two-party (more precisely - two-power) set-up, but that's fine..