The Communist Party of Ukraine and Party of Regions are supposed to be partners in the setting up of a new parliamentary coalition. According to the CPU's (rather creepy) official website, their leader Petro Symonenko is already 'having a dig' at president Yanukovych. PoR are bank-rolled by many owners of the country's largest banks and industrial enterprises. They might stink, but clearly their money doesn't..
Symonenko says: "Refusal of the announcement of an all-Ukrainian referendum on NATO and the granting of second state language status to Russian would mean betraying voters who voted for Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential election".
He was responding to a statement by Yanukovych made during a Shevchenko prize awards ceremony on Tuesday in which the president declared his support for the development of the Ukrainian language as a sole state language.
p.s. The CPU's official party programme boasts: "The theoretical and ideological foundations of the party are the teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin, which are constantly [being] enriched according to reality and change according to new conditions and tasks."
Get outta here...
The depths of Ukrainian politics never fail to suprise me. The turncoats are back, and in a big way. Vasyl Tsushko is perhaps the most alarming of all given his utterly inept job at the Interior Ministry a few years back, he has now been given the post of Economics Minister. Given that he is a Socialist Party member and that his bloc don't even have seats in Parliament I can only muse as to what behind the scenes deal Yanukovych and Moroz have reached. Perhaps the Socialists will be announcing a merge with the PoR in the next few weeks given the utterly hopeless situation they now find themselves in after turning their back on their Orange supporters and doing the dirty. Or maybe Yanukovych doesn't want to risk sending in a PoR man to sort out the finances when he knows the situation is hopeless, and the SPU see a sense to rectify their support base? And Tigipko....why? What good will he be able to do to change things as one of SIX deputy PMs? None. If he had held on for another year he could have earned a good chunk of seats at the next election - instead he will achieve nothing but taint himself by association. You can only wonder if he was a spoiler candidate of sorts designed to syphon off support from Tymoshenko in the first place? Or perhaps he's been made an offer he can't refuse? An utterly tragic day for Ukrainian democracy. You can slate Yushchenko all you like but we can only wonder what these guys are going to get upto now they have their grubby hands on EVERY lever of power...
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