Imitation Games

It’s been several months since the politicians first considered the need to express no-confidence in the Ukrainian Cabinet and finally dismiss the "Kamikaze" Government. And every time when the D-Day approached, some new reasons emerged to postpone the move. Today, ahead of the government’s public annual report scheduled for February 16, Ukraine is a witness to another imitation of the expression of non-confidence in the current composition of the Cabinet.

Actually, the Rada could have dismissed Yatsenyuk and Co. back in December 2015, after the first year of the Cabinet’s work was over. That was the first time the government formally lost its immunity status, and the reason for dismissal could be the failure to implement the reforms stipulated in the coalition agreement and the government's action plan. However, given the unstable coalition and not enough votes for the dismissal of the Cabinet, the issue didn’t even make the agenda of the Verkhovna Rada.

At the beginning of 2016, the discussions on how to get rid of the Cabinet regained momentum. Three parliamentary factions – the Coalition’s  Samopomich and the Batkivshchyna, as well as the Radical Party which had earlier quit the Rada’s majority, have all refused to support the Yatsenyuk-led Cabinet and the “kamikaze” premier in particular.

In turn, the prime minister himself last week has proposed the MPs "to submit to the parliament a resolution of non-confidence in the Cabinet." However, despite massive dissatisfaction with the government, the motion to register such draft resolution has only gained 100 votes of the needed 150.

Even if the draft is registered before February 16 and put on the agenda, there will still be no automatic dismissal of the Cabinet. The thing is that, upon the Rada’s request, the government has on time submitted to parliament its annual report, and the ministers have agreed to report publicly. Moreover, on February 10, the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Economic Policy, headed by "a premier’s friend” Andriy Ivanchuk, took note of this report. "Had a conclusion been negative, there would have been an automatic vote for the Cabinet’s dismissal next Tuesday... But things didn’t work as we hoped," one of the Samopomich MPs said.

Anyway, either it will be an “automatic vote,” or the result of the resolution of non-confidence, the Ukrainians can count on a new show in the Rada. Bidding for seats in the reformatted “kamikaze-3” government will certainly provoke, if not a red-herring fight, then a demarche of a larger part of the coalition majority. The inevitable result will be the lack of votes for the dismissal of Yatsenyuk and his team.

The statement by First Vice-Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Andriy Parubiy supports this opinion. The official noted that the parliament will not see 226 votes for the resignation of the government, and "there is no vision of who will be working next, and how to select a new government."

In other words, the most we can expect is the coalition members crossing swords on the issue of filling the vacant positions in the Cabinet, and nothing more than that.

The vote for the resignation, even if it’s held, will be a failure. Meanwhile, the renewed “kamikaze-3” government led by Arseniy Yatsenyuk will enjoy a new immunity status until the end of the current parliamentary session, as the motion of Cabinet dismissal cannot be put to a vote twice during the same session, according to the existing regulations...

Thus, until autumn, the renewed government will continue imitating unity and understanding, while the Verkhovna Rada will be imitating persistent work in the framework of the coalition, and, in principle, its existence thereof. And the president will be imitating control over these processes. And all of them in general will be imitating “bold reforms” in anticipation of the disastrous snap elections.

Tatiana Urbanskaya