- Ukraine parliament sacks government? According to the BBC's ticker-tape, at any rate, but no details as of yet. Either way, after Prime Minister Yury Yekhanurov defended the Russian gas deal earlier today, it looks like the MPs haven't bought it. Until more details emerge, here's a good overview of why the deal could be flawed, and another defending it, as well as a bit more background on the domestic Ukranian troubles caused by the deal and the growth in anti-Russian sentiment. Is this the end of the Orange Revolution?
Update: Here's the BBC's stub, doubtless soon to be expanded upon. Looks like a no-confidence vote in the government was backed by 250 out of 450 MPs which should, from what I can tell, force an early general election.
Update 2: Hmmm... According to Auntie, "Mr Yekhanurov has told reporters his government is not bound by the parliamentary vote". Yaaaay! Ignoring the will of the democratically-elected legislature in a country which saw a popular revolution just over a year ago - nice one... Keep your eye on former PM and Orange Revolution leading light, the rather gorgeous Yulia Tymoshenko.
Update 3: "Mr Yushchenko told reporters on a visit to Kazakhstan: 'This decision will be shown to be unconstitutional.'" - not "this vote IS unconstitutional", please note. Either way, one might ask what good a constitution is if it doesn't force a government to abide by a vote of no confidence...
4 Comments:
Didn't the orange revolution end when Yuschenko sacked his government last year?
I've also read elsewhere that harassment of journalists hasn't exactly stopped since the new government took over.
Depends on who you ask. Certainly Yuschenko's been getting rather cosy with his former adversary Yanukovich over recent months, despite it being Yanukovich's rigging of 2004's elections that sparked the revolution in the first place - in fact, he has been predicted to take over as Yuschenko's PM after the scheduled March elections.
There's also been a noticable reluctance to investigate those claims that Yuschenko was poisoned, and the Georgy Gongadze murder trial (kicking off at the moment) and investigations, prominent a year ago as an example of Yanukovich's dodginess, have got all kinds of weird irregularities about them.
Nonetheless, the Revolution was centred most strongly around Yuschenko. I had my suspicions at the time, but the English-language coverage was so quick to set him up as the classic pro-democracy hope in the (ex-)Soviet vs. Western conflict that it was always very difficult to get the other side of the story, even with the knowledge that he'd previously been close to a lot of the people he was campaigning against...
Very, very confusing, the entire situation.
Thoroughly entertaining though. It's like Galloway, only without the whole being-a-useless-gobshite nonsense.
Imagine a world without Russia's/ex-bits-of-Russia's crazy take on democracy... we'd all be worse off.
Is the answer, "A constitution based on Montesquieu's conception of the separation of powers?"
Post a Comment