New parliamentary majority receives name

Coalition of National Unity, Stability, and Order

The new parliamentary majority has been called the Coalition of National Unity, Stability, and Order, Kommersant daily (#225 dated 11.12.2008) reported, referring to the text of the coalition agreement proposed by the BYuT faction for signing to its colleagues from the factions of Our Ukraine – People’s Self-Defense and the Lytvyn’s Bloc.

According to the information of daily’s sources, the OU-PSD faction representatives state that at first BYuT representatives proposed them to sign again the coalition agreement that was signed by the factions in December of the last year. However, OU-PSD faction members, in particular, faction’s deputy head Roman Zvarych, were negative about that. Thus, BYuT developed a new variant of the agreement.

According to the newspaper, the “Agreement on Creating the Coalition of National Unity, Stability, and Development” comprises 13 pages and consists of two parts. The first declares principles of the new parliamentary majority activities and its top-priority tasks. In particular, it stresses the necessity to reform almost all spheres of the state policy, to adopt a law on the parliamentary opposition. A separate provision of the agreement stipulates a refusal of coalition participants to carry out a snap parliamentary poll.

Besides, the document reads that “the program of governmental activities, reflecting the principles of coalition, should be automatically supported by the majority”.

The second part, called “Regulations of the Coalition Activities”, consist of six chapters.

“The coalition includes the majority of lawmakers of the Verkhovna Rada`s constitutional number”, reads the provision 1.1 of the agreement. The same provision is reiterated in the last chapter, which reads that “the activities of the coalition are stopped when the number of coalition members is less than the number of the constitutional majority of MPs”.

Thus, the newspaper reads, BYuT proposes to declare the coalition invalid when it includes less than 226 MPs. Besides, BYuT proposes to establish a new order of considering and passing draft laws. In line with provision 1.5.2., the coalition supports only the draft laws and decrees that were agreed in the government or were approved by the coalition council.