President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday accused his opponents of ”political corruption” and of bringing Ukraine to the brink of violent confrontation after they refused to fulfil his order to dissolve Parliament.
Speaking to the Guardian at his offices in Kiev, Yushchenko said the behaviour of his arch-rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, threatened to cause a repeat of the armed stand-off between executive and legislature in Russia in 1993.
”The process which the pro-government coalition has formulated in recent months is equally dangerous to democratic values,” the president said, referring to the events in Moscow which led to the then Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, ordering tanks to fire on barricaded MPs.
He vowed to prevent violence, saying he had instructed the army and security forces to prevent ”a single armed person from getting on to the streets of Kiev”.
Yushchenko issued a decree late on Monday dissolving Parliament and calling early elections for May 27, but Yanukovich and his coalition, which controls the assembly, have refused to stop work, and surrounded the building with demonstrators.
Thousands more of Yanukovich’s flag-waving supporters poured into the capital, Kiev, from the provinces on Wednesday in protest at the decree, which the prime minister has called ”a fatal error”.
They set up tents near the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) building and in Independence Square, the scene of the 2004 Orange Revolution protests, where a stage was also erected.
Refusal
As thousands of protesters clamoured outside the gilded meeting hall where the president gave his interview, Yushchenko said he would not rescind his decree to dissolve Parliament, despite the refusal of MPs to submit.
Wearing thick make-up to hide the scarring on his face caused by a poisoning attempt, the president stressed that the recent desertion of MPs from his party to join Yanukovich’s ruling coalition was unlawful and a valid reason to dissolve Parliament.
”This is a gross violation,” he said, speaking in his first interview since the crisis broke. ”According to the Ukrainian Constitution a majority coalition can only be formed on the basis of factions … rather than individual MPs.”
By enticing more opposing MPs to join them, Yanukovich’s supporters had hoped to boost their 260 deputies to 300, allowing them to paralyse presidential initiatives. But Yushchenko said the desertions from one party to another represented a ”partial cancellation of the political results of elections”.
Brandishing a copy of the Ukrainian Constitution marked with pink highlighter, he added: ”This is a revision of the people’s choice, the people’s vote.”
Asked to comment on claims that 11 MPs who crossed to Yanukovich’s coalition were paid large sums, he replied: ”There is a process of political corruption.”
Yanukovich’s bloc has asked the constitutional court to strike out Yushchenko’s decree. It is expected to report back within a month. The president said he would abide by its decision. He expected to be proved right, he said.
Ukraine has been in a state of near constant crisis since the Orange Revolution in 2004 when Yushchenko became president following weeks of street protests at an election rigged in favour of Yanukovich.
The president at that time had a powerful ally in the firebrand populist Yulia Timoshenko, but the two fell out and Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions made a strong comeback in polls last year.
Yushchenko’s popularity has faded fast and critics accuse him of being a lame duck president who is indecisive and incapable of rallying the orange vote.
In August he was forced to accept Parliament’s nomination of Yanukovich to a strengthened premiership, leaving the country with an explosive cohabitation between two fundamentally opposing leaders. Each of the two men controls different key ministries and government institutions.
Ukraine’s population remains deeply divided between the Russian-speaking east which supports Yanukovich’s pro-Moscow stance, and the Ukrainian-speaking west which largely comes out for Yushchenko or Timoshenko, who favour European integration.
Yanukovich said on Wednesday: ”Until the constitutional court examines this issue we will engage in no preparations for any elections.”
In Independence Square several thousand of the prime minister’s supporters gathered to listen to rousing speeches and blaring live music.
Alexander Bondarchuk, a former MP waving the hammer and sickle flag of the Communist party — part of the ruling coalition — said he had come to protest against the president’s ”illegal decree”.
”It’s clear to me that Yushchenko is just a marionette in the hands of the Americans,” he said.
”They want to create instability here and push us towards Nato.”
He added: ”If there are new elections then half of the population will not participate and that can only lead to a total split in the country or a bloody conflict.”
Supporters of Yushchenko were few and far between. However, it was clear that not all Yanukovich’s protesters had willingly travelled to Kiev.
”I only came here because I work at a metallurgical plant which belongs to an oligarch who supports Yanukovich,” said Lyosha (27) from Krivoy Rog in the south-east. ”They sent 40 of us here in a bus and they’re giving us 100 hryvnia (about $20) per day. But I don’t support him. I just didn’t want to lose my job. I’m for Timoshenko.”
Backstory
In 2004 supporters of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko came out in Kiev against presidential elections rigged in favour of his opponent, then prime minister Viktor Yanukovich. The Orange Revolution forced a re-run, which Yushchenko won with his Our Ukraine party. But his partnership with the charismatic populist Yulia Timoshenko soon crumbled, allowing Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions to make a dramatic comeback in parliamentary elections early last year. In August Yushchenko was obliged to accept Yanukovich, in favour of close ties with Russia, to a beefed-up premiership. Since then the two have been locked in battle. – Guardian Unlimited Â