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Ukraine's parliament faces day of reckoning

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Ukraine's protracted political crisis could come to the crunch Monday as the parliamentary coalition expects its candidate to be endorsed as prime minister and the opposition will seek a dissolution of the legislature.
KIEV, July 24 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine's protracted political crisis could come to the crunch Monday as the parliamentary coalition expects its candidate to be endorsed as prime minister and the opposition will seek a dissolution of the legislature.

A spokesman for the Socialist Party, one of three parties in the "anti-crisis" coalition led by Viktor Yanukovych's pro-Russia Party of Regions, said the alliance was looking forward to President Viktor Yushchenko recommending Yanukych's candidature for prime minister Monday.

"We expect to receive the president's recommendation to approve Yanukovych as prime minister," Mykola Rudkovsky said.

Ukraine has been in parliamentary limbo since elections in March and if no government is formed by July 25 - 60 days after the current assembly's first session - Yushchenko could disband parliament and call a new election.

If the president does endorse the 56-year-old's candidacy, it will mean a second term as prime minister for the former regional governor, as he served under President Leonid Kuchma in 2002-2004.

However, Yushchenko's first premier, Yulia Tymoshenko, is looking to block the appointment of her arch rival, whose controversial victory in the 2004 presidential race sparked the streets protests known as the "orange revolution" that eventually led to a re-run of the vote and Western-leaning Yushchenko's triumph.

Tymoshenko said members of her eponymous bloc, which with 22% of the vote in the March 26 parliamentary elections only trailed the pro-Russia Party of Regions, would start procedures to give up their lawmaking powers Monday in a bid to secure the dissolution of the 450-seat Supreme Rada.

The fiery heroine of the "orange revolution", who was herself tipped for a return to the prime minister's chair until a three-party coalition collapsed earlier this month, needs 151 members of the Rada to give up their powers to force the move.

The "anti-crisis" coalition - the Party of Regions, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party - holds 240 of the Rada's seats. It formally came into effect July 18 after a previous coalition deal between the Tymoshenko Bloc, pro-presidential Our Ukraine and the Socialists expired.

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