Ukraine's acting PM in talks on new Government

Ukraine’s newly appointed acting prime minister today planned to delve straight into talks with party leaders, aimed at putting together another broad-based Cabinet to replace the dismissed Orange Revolution team.

His charismatic predecessor, meanwhile, kept the country guessing about whether she would now move into opposition against President Viktor Yushchenko.

Yushchenko dismissed Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s government yesterday, throwing out of office the heroine of the Orange Revolution that swept him to power. He also accepted the resignation of one of the movement’s top financial backers, Petro Poroshenko.

The break-up, amid allegations of corruption, deepens a crisis that has cut into the popularity of Yushchenko and left him looking isolated, especially in contrast to the broad coalition that joined in last year’s mass protests, which many Ukrainians saw as a new start for their nation.

“Independence Square betrayed,” declared the daily newspaper, Kievskiye Vedomosti, while the newspaper Den pronounced: “Burying the Revolution.”

Tymoshenko so far has been reticent, but some of her allies have called Yushchenko’s move a betrayal of his revolutionary comrade, who did more than any of his other allies to persuade protesters to come out the street last year - and then stay until the opposition triumphed. Radio call-in shows Friday morning were bursting with support for Tymoshenko.

“Yushchenko the president is Tymoshenko’s creature. He betrayed her, and, thus, showed himself as a shortsighted politician,” said Irina Shvets, a doctor. “Why sack the whole Cabinet if the conflict is between Tymoshenko and Poroshenko only? And how could (Yushchenko) put on the same level the real leader and a businessman who lost all sense of proportion?”

Relations between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, however, had long ago turned tetchy, with Yushchenko repeatedly scolding Tymoshenko for interfering too much in the free market system.

The latest criticism came just last month when the president blamed the government for its handling of the re-nationalisation of one of the world’s biggest Ferroalloy plants, Nikopol, suggesting his Cabinet had become embroiled in a dispute between two financial groups and giving the appearance that it was handing control from one business group to another.

Tymoshenko insisted that she’d done nothing wrong.

If she decides to move into the opposition, she will become a strong challenger to the president, particularly before March parliamentary elections.

“I can predict that our team, which will be headed by Yulia Tymoshenko, will win the parliamentary election and return to its position in April,” former Vice-Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko was quoted as telling the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

Tomenko’s resignation and his allegations of corruption against chief of the Security and Defence Council Poroshenko – the second such attack – triggered the government’s dismissal yesterday.

“New appointments should come pretty soon, the pause should not be too long. Otherwise, (Yushchenko) will again face criticism,” said Oleksandr Lytvynenko, a political analyst with Kiev’s Razumkov think tank.

Many of the dismissed Cabinet members, whom Yushchenko asked to temporarily remain in their jobs, said they would gladly continue to serve under the president, if asked.

Acting Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov, who had been in southern Ukraine and rushed back to Kiev, said he would work quickly to put together his team. Parliament also was expected to move fast to confirm Yekhanurov in the job; Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn cut short a trip to the US and returned to Kiev.

Yushchenko accused his Cabinet and aides of focusing more on their infighting than on running the country of 48 million, and he was deeply critical of what his team had accomplished.

The allegations of corruption and a mixing of business and politics – levelled at both Poroshenko and Tymoshenko – were particularly damaging. The Orange Revolution team rose to power on a pledge to end the corruption that blackened the rule of former President Leonid Kuchma.

Yushchenko’s popularity already had been waning, and opinion polls showed Ukrainians increasingly believed the country was headed in the wrong direction, citing rising prices and a lack of progress by the new government.

A scandal in July over the lavish lifestyle of Yushchenko’s teenage son also dented the president’s popularity.