CIS

Home page

CIS

Yanukovich says Ukrainian parliament to have new coalition

05 February 2010 01:55 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. After the February 7 runoff presidential election, a new majority will be set up in the Ukrainian parliament and it will form a new cabinet of ministers and endorse a new Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovich, the leader of Ukraine’s Regions Party and one of the two candidates on the runoff ballots, said Thursday night on the One Plus One TV channel, APA reports citing â€œITAR-TASSâ€.

"To be sure, we’ll change the coalition," he said. "It’ll be set up in a new format and, naturally, we’ll replace the Prime Minister."

As he spoke about the nature of the projected new coalition, he said it will embrace the majority of Our Ukraine faction that has supported President Viktor Yushchenko to date, as well as the bloc of political forces led by parliament speaker Vladimir Litvin, the Communist Party, and the Regions Party.

"That’ll be quite enough," he said.

As he answered the question on why he needed the office of the president, Yanukovich said: "I’ve been queuing up /to get the post of president/ for quite some time and I’m not going to drop out of that queue."

Earlier in the day, he said he is not going discard the plans for raising the social standards in this country, even though the International Monetary Fund puts forward radically different requirements.

"I won’t discard the raising of social standards because many countries in the world , including our neighbors with whom we have relations of strategic partnership, have revised these standards upwards several times since 2008, that is, during the period when the population’s incomes fall sharply and prices climb steeply," Yanukovich said.

He indicated that the Regions Party views proper action on the law on social standards as a duty to the low-income sections of the population.
"That’s why we’ll hold talks with the IMF and ask it to factor our specific situation into its policies," Yanukovich said adding he feels confident that a correct solution to the problem will be tapped in the final run.