Oleksandr Moroz finally struck a bargain with Viktor Yanukovych. The bargain turned out to be very successful. The well-known socialist, Vasyl Tsushko, will take over the 300,000-strong police force instead of Yurii Lutsenko. The prime minister had proposed Mykola Dzhyga from the Party of Regions for the position of Minister of Internal Affairs, but in one day, lickety-split, the latter lost his ministerial ambitions to Tsushko. On Friday the socialists showed enviable party discipline and solidarity when the whole faction voted to dismiss Lutsenko, who until recently had been one of them.
During the Thursday evening vote parliament was short only three votes to dismiss Lutsenko. His resignation was supported by the members of the Party of Regions, the communists, the business wing of the BYuT, and one socialist. It was the socialists’ behavior that made the situation tricky. Some experts have already labeled that step as a manifestation of party consistency (Lutsenko belonged to the Socialist Party of Ukraine). They are naive. In fact, everything is much more prosaic.
Tsushko, the new interior minister, regards himself as a compromise figure in this position. “I think I am a compromise figure convenient to both the president and prime minister,” he told journalists after the vote.
Interestingly, Viktor Baloha, the head of the Presidential Secretariat, welcomed Tsushko’s appointment. His gracious attitude at the Friday briefing shocked journalists, who had expected an absolutely different reaction. “This is one of the best decisions because Tsushko is an evenhanded politician, who will not make any abrupt moves and will ensure that society will be calm, because he understands the role played by the interior minister,” Baloha said. He called Lutsenko’s dismissal a “normal process.”
As for Lutsenko, political circles are actively discussing the news that President Yushchenko plans to make him the head of the SBU. Volodymyr Zastava, a political analyst, thinks such “discussions” are an informational provocation. “The anti-crisis coalition will not vote for such an appointment. There is another curious thing. The image of a new pro-presidential ‘Orange’ force has long been present in the political elite. The only problem is its leader. What is needed is an odious, charismatic politician who has not lost the people’s trust. Such a person may be Yurii Lutsenko,” Zastava believes.
REVENGE AGAINST TARASIUK
On Thursday President Yushchenko declared in an interview with the BBC that “Tarasiuk will continue to work.” But the anti-crisis coalition decided otherwise and managed to take revenge on the “pro-NATO” minister, who was ousted by 247 votes.
At the Saturday plenary meeting at the Verkhovna Rada the Party of Regions and the communists accused Tarasiuk of trying to sabotage the prime minister’s trip to the US. He was even blamed for the fact that Russian gas prices have increased to $130 and tariffs have tripled. Some “friends” also had a hand in Tarasiuk’s resignation. Two out of the 247 votes were cast by members of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine fraction, Volodymyr Zaplatynsky and Oleksandr Volkov. Four out of 18 organizers of the maneuver in the BYuT also voted for Tarasiuk’s resignation: Mykhailo Hladiy, Oleksandr Yedin, Maksym Lutsky, and Vasyl Khmelnytsky. While Lutsenko’s resignation is more or less clear, the Tarasiuk story is not over. Since there is no law on the Cabinet of Ministers, only the Constitutional Court can have the final say. According to the president’s advisor, Ihor Koliushko, the Verkhovna Rada’s decision is devoid of logic. “If the minister is appointed on the president’s motion, if according to the Constitution the president determines foreign policy, then, respectively, the question of resignation cannot be solved without the president. Then again, the Constitution may be interpreted in many ways, and only the Constitutional Court can issue a systematic interpretation,” Koliushko told The Day.
Meanwhile, the dismissed minister has to obey the decision of Ukraine’s parliament. At least this is the opinion of the head of the Presidential Secretariat, who has not excluded the possibility that the president will again propose Tarasiuk for the post of foreign minister. “President Yushchenko has the right to propose Tarasiuk again,” Baloha noted.
However, it is a thankless business to foresee the president’s actions. What is more, before his visit to London Yanukovych will meet the president and discuss candidates for the foreign ministry post. As the August events revealed, the president has a tendency to buckle to persuasion.
MINISTRY OF YOUTH TO BE HEADED BY PENSIONER
Finally, the Verkhovna Rada appointed the Regional, Viktor Korzh, the vice-president of the National Olympic Committee, for the position of Minister of Family, Youth, and Sports Affairs.
This decision was supported by 247 deputies. Korzh was elected to parliament in the Party of Regions’ list under number 172. He was born in 1957. When he was registering as a candidate for parliament, he was listed as a pensioner.
