Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her ruling coalition was expected to be ousted in a no-confidence vote yesterday, setting the seal on Ukraininan President Viktor Yanukovych’s election triumph last month.
Tymoshenko on Tuesday said she was likely to lose the political showdown with Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and accused the speaker of parliament of undermining her majority.
A new coalition, which may be formed within days, will be “false” and her coalition was “ruined illegally,” she told reporters in Kiev. Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn earlier told lawmakers “four parliamentary groups discussed the coalition status and decided that the coalition does not exist as such.”
PHOTO: EPA
Tymoshenko has fought to hang on to power after losing the Feb. 7 presidential run-off vote to Yanukovych. She’s accused her opponent of falsifying more than 1 million votes, though she failed to win court backing for the allegation. The legislature has been in limbo since September, preventing it from passing a budget needed to keep an IMF loan in place and jeopardizing any economic resurrection.
Ivan Kyrylenko, head of Tymoshenko’s parliamentary group, said Lytvyn’s comments were part of a “dangerous practice” that breaches Ukraine’s constitution.
“Lytvyn’s statement will not be endorsed by Tymoshenko’s bloc as it is not legally clear and there will be different legislative assessments,” said Yuriy Yakymenko, an analyst at the Razumkov Center for Political and Economic Studies in Kiev.
Tymoshenko has said she would step down immediately if she loses the no-confidence vote, the Ekonomicheskie Izvestia newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing Kyrylenko. She would hand the premiership over to one of her two deputies, who would stand in as acting prime minister until parliament forms a new governing coalition, Kyrylenko said, Izvestia reported.
Lytvyn, who also leads the smallest bloc in the Kiev-based assembly, said he was able to establish that she no longer commands a majority after speaking with representatives from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, former president Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine, the Communists and Lytvyn’s own bloc.
The cost to protect Ukraine debt against default dropped and bond yields fell to the lowest since 2008 on Tuesday.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in