Ukraine’s President Petro
Poroshenko has announced the deadlock between parliament and his country’s
government is over, with the appointment of the new prime minister.
His former ally Arseniy
Yatsenyuk officially resigned last week, after months of pressure both from
Poroshenko, the opposition and the Ukrainian public. Poroshenko issued a thinly
veiled request for Yatsenyuk to resign, calling for “a full reboot” of government in February. A parliamentary vote of
no-confidence the same day failed to oust Yatsenyuk and all coalition partners
except Poroshenko’s party and Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front, withdrew their
support.
Last week parliamentary
speaker Volodymyr Groysman was appointed to succeed Yatsenyuk, following a
close parliamentary vote.
Poroshenko addressed National
Reform Council, the body formed by the him to oversee pro-European reforms,
which comprises the cabinet, the speaker and finance officials, on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian leader told ministers that the sheer fact they were meeting
showed that the political crisis that caused the slow collapse of the previous
government was over.
Poroshenko hailed the meeting
as a “historical event” news site Ukrainskaya Pravda reports, urging ministers to show professional
and political responsibility in government.
Groysman leads a charge of
members from Poroshenko’s Bloc Petro Poroshenko party to strengthen the party’s
presence in cabinet. The current coalition government is made up entirely of
two parties—Bloc Petro Poroshenko and People’s Front.
Key figures such as Interior
Minister Arsen Avakov, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin and Minister of Defence
Stepan Poltorak have retained their jobs, while the country is still without a
Health Minister.
Unlike the previous
government, Groysman’s cabinet has no ministers from Fatherland, Oleh Lyashko’s
Radical Party and Self-Reliance, all of whom withdrew from government months
ago. This theoretically means the coalition is less fractious, but questions
remain how effective the new government will be in combatting the endemic
corruption in Ukraine. An issue which, according to recent polls, has come to be perceived by
Ukrainians as a problem as serious as the war against pro-Russian separatists
in the east.
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