Yushchenko Meets With Party Bosses, Sets 5-Day Coalition Deadline
During talks with the leaders of the five parties that have gained representation in parliament, President Yushchenko laid down markers for the coalition-building process, Ukrayinska Pravda reports.
He urged that the coalition be formed within five days, at which time he will, with the advice and consent of the coalition, nominate the Prime Minister.
Yushchenko demanded the rescinding of the Cabinet of Ministers Bill, a controversial piece of legislation passed earlier this year that strips the President of much of his authority.
The President also reaffirmed his Constitutional authority over law enforcement. BYuT leader Yulia Tymoshenko — the Orange coalition’s No.1 PM candidate — expressed her willingness to supply the opposition with chairmanship of the Audit Chamber, as well as with deputy minister and governor posts.
Yanukovych signalled readiness to assume the opposition role:
Якщо ми будемо в коаліції, прем’єрське крісло буде в партії регіонів. Ми готові взяти на себе відповідальність, ми маємо на це (формування коаліції) право як переможці цих перегонів... якщо так не станеться, у нас є єдиний шлях – це опозиція".
If we are in the coalition, the premier’s seat will be with the Party of Regions. We are ready to take responsibility; we have a right to do so [form the coalition] as winners of the election…but if this does not happen, then we have only one way — the opposition.
He did not support the idea of rescinding the Cabinet of Ministers Bill, saying instead that amendments could be made.
Sources:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/10/8/65085.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/10/8/65090.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/10/8/65092.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/10/8/65094.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/10/8/65100.htm
12 comments:
I missed the days before the election when no one could do opinion polls on the coming election. It did cut down on the # of surveys, well they are back!
"Gorshenin’s Institute expert Volodymyr Zastava noted that “rudiments “of the Soviet conscious” are rather strong in the Ukrainian society yet, because the democratic value were not needed in the Soviet Union."
http://unian.net/eng/news
/news-216473.html
Luida
Thank you, Luida!:)
Your contributions to this blog are invaluable!
You've just supplied the link to a highly insightful analysis of how Sovok is still going strong in Ukraine.
http://unian.net/eng/news/news-216473.html
good book.
dlw
An antique primer on never-to-be-implemented economic reform, or, better yet, a requiem for the mirage of Ukraine’s free market economy!:)
This publication reads like a dusty half-burned yoga book harvested from the fields of a post-apocalyptic reality.
What’s missing in this piece of archaeology, however, is any discussion of the cultural aspects of transition. In the pre-grabitization era, swarms of Western consultants took pains to explain the nuts and bolts of the market economy to Ukrainian apparatchiks — without knowing a thing about the local way of life.
Corporate culture — the soft side of business — went underexplored and underestimated. As a result, the Smithian “evangelization” of Ukraine suffered a massive failure.
I doubt that Kravchuk and Kuchma are familiar with Adam Smith. But that didn’t prevent them from swimming in prosperity, a stroke of dumb luck conferred to them by the not-so-invisible hand of crony capitalism.
Thanks for the time trip, David:)
Taras
Underneath it all, how is crony capitalism any different from the sovok regime? To me, the only difference is that in crony capitalism, the oligarchs no longer have to pretend - the Mercedes and mansions all come out in the open, without having to pretend that "it's for the glory of all comrades."
The biggest corporation on earth was the Soviet Union. It was badly run and it went bankrupt.
The subsidiaries no longer wanted to report to headquarters, so that they too could get corporate jets and all the perks for themselves.
What do you think Yushchenko is up to?
Thanks for the review...
The book generally is critical of those westerners that believed naively that markets wd just emerge but still holds up hope that there might be some lessons...
The title is a play off of a movie entitled "Mr Smith goes to Washington" that starred Jimmy Stewart as a scout master who is appointed as an acting senator and learns about the ways things are done in WashDC...
Maybe it is a relic of an earlier more hopeful time, but that doesn't mean that it's lessons on the import of morality and law for not-so-crony capitalism have no value for the former Soviet Union!
dlw
Elmer,
Of course, there’s more freedom.
That said, our current economic outlook imposes severe limits on that freedom. Paraphrasing “no romance without finance,” I’d say that “no freedom without finance” holds equally true. Roughly speaking, freedom distribution = income distribution.
Sometimes, for simplicity’s sake, I’m prone to believe that the only difference between now and then, as expressed in the “guns and butter” model, is that instead of the guns we now have those grabs. In other words, what went into the jaws of the defense industry now goes to the oligarchs’ offshore coffers.
Yushchenko has a choice to make. Let him do it. Let us see his true colors.
David,
Adam Smith never arrived to Moscow. As for Kyiv, maybe I should check on the VIP arrivals for Pinchuk’s Aerosvit Airlines:)))?
Joking aside, the basic tenets of the market economy catechized in this book have been largely lost on their target audience. And the train of crony capitalism left the station a long time ago.
As a man on the front lines, I believe that today the book has no value except historical.
I respect your view.
I think it's value may depend on the short-run and long-run perspective, but as John Maynard Keynes said, "in the long run, we are all dead!"
dlw
As far as I know, in the course of his life, Keynes traveled the ideological distance from free trade to protectionism:)
iow, you have next to no knowledge about Keynes...
Keynes evolved a good deal over the course of his lifetime. I think he was mostly against the free-reign of int'l capital than int'l trade proper.
dlw
I summed up Keynes’ evolution based on a very interesting book that I had read three years ago.
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Capital-New-Wealth-Organizations/dp/0385483813
Of course, I’ve never met Keynes in person to form a more intimate opinion on where he stood.
Still, after a cursory Google crusade, I can proudly say that I’m not the only one with next to no knowledge of Keynes:)
Sorry, wrong reference. The book I should have referred to is
http://www.amazon.com/Future-Perfect-Challenge-Promise-Globalization/dp/0812930967
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