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Azarov Nominated for Ukrainian PM – Again

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Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych nominated his longtime ally Mykola Azarov to head the government on Sunday, the vote to be the first serious test for Ukraine’s recently elected and bitterly divided parliament.

MOSCOW, December 9 (RIA Novosti) – Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych nominated his longtime ally Mykola Azarov to head the government on Sunday, the vote to be the first serious test for Ukraine’s recently elected and bitterly divided parliament.

The Verkhovna Rada, elected in late October, will convene for the first time on Wednesday. It remained immediately unclear when it could vote for the new Prime Minister.

Azarov, 64, headed the previous Cabinet since 2010, but was removed by Yanukovych after the Rada elections.

The removal and reappointment scheme was needed to ensure Azarov’s legitimacy, Mikhail Chechetov, a lawmaker with the pro-Yanukovych Party of Regions, said on Sunday.

But the reappointment is not sealed yet: the Party of Regions, which was led by its founder Azarov at the October polls, only controls 223 of 450 seats in the parliament.

Fatherland - the party of Azarov’s jailed predecessor Yulia Tymoshenko - and boxer Vitali Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform, which have 141 seats between them, said in separate statements they would not support Azarov, as did the ultranationalist Svoboda, which has 38 seats. The fifth and last Rada fraction, the Communists, did not comment as of Sunday evening.

Yanukovych wants Azarov to complete the economic reforms he launched, but may oust him next fall to appease critics in case Ukraine’s economic conditions deteriorate, said Alexei Vlasov, an expert on post-Soviet states with the Moscow State University.

 

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