On July 31 the head of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine signed the odious and resonant law on languages that gives Russian the status of the regional language. He did it regardless of all his previous declarations that he would not sign this document. Now, according to the website of the Verkhovna Rada, the document has been sent to the President Viktor Yanukovych. What will he do? The Day asked the expert of the corporation for strategic consulting Hardarika Kostiantyn MATVIIENKO to share his ideas:
“Lytvyn has been nailed [however, he had been going to this status many years before. – Ed.] because if he had been sued to the court and the court had found that the law had been adopted according to all procedures and norms Lytvyn would have been accused of negligence.
“Of course, there would have been few people who would have dared to do it. Lytvyn would have found witnesses who would have insisted that the law had been signed with violations and it was impossible to be signed. Actually, they have created an image for the society that the head of the Verkhovna Rada did his best so that the law was not signed but he had to perform his duties… On the other hand, the Party of Regions is really putting pressure upon him and under this pressure Lytvyn will go and tell his electorate that he resisted as he could but the circumstances were stronger than him.
“However, there is one positive thing about it: to adopt this law the politicians had to resort to the methods of political fraud and total pressure upon the head of the parliament. The whole society has seen it. That is why the apologists of the Russian language have humiliated it this way.
“Another interesting thing is that when looking through the party list of the Party of Regions I have not found the people (Kolesnichenko in particular), who pushed this law forward and Inna Bohoslovska is only at the 60th place.
“Of curse, signing of this law completely depends on the president. In all probability, he will do it. However, after signing this law, Lytvyn sent a letter to the president. I do not know its content but I suppose that it explains why this law should not be signed. In this case the president might address the parliament with the amendments. If he returned the law to the parliament for another examination it would satisfy everybody, as for me. However, the Ukrainian politicians have chosen the biggest political nonsense and are doing their best to aggravate the situation.
“I am afraid that they will not make any reasonable decision concerning this law and it will be signed. Then we will have a reason to declare that the work of the parliament was not legitimate and refuse to consider this law.”
