New Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych yesterday completed his takeover of power by forming a new government and appointing close ally Mykola Azarov — dour technocrat — as prime minister.
As the final nail in the coffin of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine’s parliament voted for a new coalition led by Yanukovych’s pro-presidential bloc, the Party of Regions. The vote followed the collapse last week of the coalition headed by Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s Orange prime minister.
Thursday’s vote in the finely balanced Rada (parliament) follows a change in the law by Yanukovych on coalition formation allowing deputies to support a coalition individually rather than as a political bloc. Yanukovych defeated Tymoshenko in last month’s presidential election.
Yanukovych’s move ends the acrimonious standoff between president and prime minister that has characterized Ukraine’s chaotic politics over the past five years, after Tymoshenko fell out with Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s former Orange president. Yanukovych and Azarov, by contrast, are close allies.
A figures-loving technocrat, Azarov is a former head of the tax inspectorate who served as finance minister from 2002 to 2004. In January 2005 he briefly became prime minister; his only significant act was to give a generous retirement package to Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s retiring president, including a 50 percent discount off his electricity bill.
“He’s extremely boring and an anti-populist. He’s not charismatic like Tony Blair or Yulia Tymoshenko. But that’s what we need at the moment. The worst thing is to have a prime minister who treats issues like they are a political campaign,” one Ukrainian official said yesterday.
Describing the state’s finances as dire, Azarov said Ukraine would meet all its obligations before the IMF and push through a “realistic” budget for this year.
“The country has been plundered, the coffers are empty, state debt has risen threefold,” Azarov said, adding that he would restart talks with the IMF over a suspended US$16.4 billion bailout package.
Azarov was born in Russia and is viewed as the most Russophile member of the new Cabinet. Yanukovych unveiled other key members of his government yesterday and named Kostyantyn Khryshchenko, Ukraine’s urbane English-speaking ambassador in Moscow, as the new foreign minister.
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