Friday, April 03, 2009

Fiddling while Rome burns..

The date for the presidential elections has been set for later this year on 25th October. Today PoR have started the 'second phase' of troublemaking by blocking the work of parliament...

PM Tymoshenko has accused PoR and the president of collusion to force early parliamentary elections onto the country yet again.

"I suspect that a limited company has been formed based on the principle: we do the blocking and you announce early elections by ukaz. It's a shame - this co-operation between Yanukovych and the president. They want to conduct early elections, and this means the country will be left dangling for 8 months, wrecking any remaining stability," said the PM.

She also declared the blocking of parliament by members of PoR is hindering the acceptance of anti-crisis laws and is directed at destabilizing the work of parliament and the political situation in general, adding that her team is categorically against any early parliamentary elections. "These irresponsible attempts have been made before, and ended with nothing. I promise them this - I will not permit them to ruin and wreck the country," she emphasized.

Party of Regions deny collusion and swear that they are blocking the VR without any deals with the presidential secretariat.

Oleksandr Tretyakov, a former close aide of president Yushchenko and a NUNS elder, commented: "Today we have became the witnesses of start of a scenario to completely discredit the President undertaken by the PoR together with technical personnel from the secretariat that are known to the entire country. They are specially provoking Viktor Yushchenko to issue and edict to break up parliament in order to provide additional arguments in favor of the beginning of impeachment procedures," adding, "It is possible to draw the conclusion that Party of Regions is intentionally destabilizing the country, [in order to] provoke serious economic and social shocks in society."

Maybe its time for a few stern 'phone calls from the 'grown-ups' at the IMF and European Commission..

1 comment:

UkrToday said...

Whilst I have doubts as to the constitutionality of the proposed October Poll the fact remains that a Presidential election in Autumn is by far a better proposal then holding an election in January in the midst of Ukraine's bitter cold winter.

Yushchenko's attempts to challenge the elections and cling on to power for an extra 3 months will be futile. He has already lost the battle and the election.

With a majority of Ukrainians wanting Presidential elections to be held early Yushchenko's best option would be to offer his resignation in order to facilitate the October poll.

Ukraine can not afford a prolonged Presidential campaign. The race to the Presidency will be in full flight by the time the CCU gets around to hearing any appeal. And as Yushchenko once claimed the decision of the Parliament, passed by an absolute constitutional majority of more then two thirds means he can not veto the law and that the decision stands until and if the CCU overturns it.

The presidential election locomotive will be up and running and any attempt to derail it will only end in disaster.Yushchenko will win no hearts, minds or support for the sake of three months. As desperate as he is he has lost all respect and all support.

Yulia and co have certianly out foxed the fox. Even Yatseniuk is supporting the call for an early Presidential election.

Whats intreging is that the calling of an October poll also limits the ability of the President to dismiss the Parliament. There will not be an uprising of public opinion supporting Yushchenko's position.

if Yushchenko was foolish enough to try and dismiss the parliament again he would find it that much harder and he would be spending all his time challenging the outcome in the courts and by the time they hear the case it will be all but over. Yushchenko has lost respct and support and no one will champion his cause. I doubt if the US or the EU will be able to support any challenge given that they failed to uphold the question of rule of law in 2007.

COST OF THE PRESIDENTIAL BALLOT

The cost of a two round presidential election is considerable and one has to seriously question the merits of the direct election model.

The money and limited public resources required to hold a two round Presidential election could surely be better spent elsewhere.

One option that Ukraine should consider is to adopt a single round Preferential voting system. one round, same result at half the cost of the two round system.

Ukraine would save over 100 Millions Dollars in direct and indirect costs. The results of the election would be known within days not weeks or months.