New Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych yesterday completed his takeover of power by forming a new government and appointing close ally Mykola Azarov — dour technocrat — as prime minister.
As the final nail in the coffin of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine’s parliament voted for a new coalition led by Yanukovych’s pro-presidential bloc, the Party of Regions. The vote followed the collapse last week of the coalition headed by Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s Orange prime minister.
Thursday’s vote in the finely balanced Rada (parliament) follows a change in the law by Yanukovych on coalition formation allowing deputies to support a coalition individually rather than as a political bloc. Yanukovych defeated Tymoshenko in last month’s presidential election.
Yanukovych’s move ends the acrimonious standoff between president and prime minister that has characterized Ukraine’s chaotic politics over the past five years, after Tymoshenko fell out with Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s former Orange president. Yanukovych and Azarov, by contrast, are close allies.
A figures-loving technocrat, Azarov is a former head of the tax inspectorate who served as finance minister from 2002 to 2004. In January 2005 he briefly became prime minister; his only significant act was to give a generous retirement package to Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s retiring president, including a 50 percent discount off his electricity bill.
“He’s extremely boring and an anti-populist. He’s not charismatic like Tony Blair or Yulia Tymoshenko. But that’s what we need at the moment. The worst thing is to have a prime minister who treats issues like they are a political campaign,” one Ukrainian official said yesterday.
Describing the state’s finances as dire, Azarov said Ukraine would meet all its obligations before the IMF and push through a “realistic” budget for this year.
“The country has been plundered, the coffers are empty, state debt has risen threefold,” Azarov said, adding that he would restart talks with the IMF over a suspended US$16.4 billion bailout package.
Azarov was born in Russia and is viewed as the most Russophile member of the new Cabinet. Yanukovych unveiled other key members of his government yesterday and named Kostyantyn Khryshchenko, Ukraine’s urbane English-speaking ambassador in Moscow, as the new foreign minister.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS