Eurasia Press & News
Up to 20,000 protesters gathered in the Ukrainian capital on Friday to hear the opposition leader demand the resignations of the ex-Soviet state’s leaders for failing to tackle the economic crisis.
President Viktor Yushchenko said he was prepared to consider early elections for both president and parliament, two days after parliament called a presidential poll in October, earlier than anticipated. That vote was a resounding and rare consensus in the chamber aimed against the president.
In Washington, the International Monetary Fund announced it was sending a mission to Ukraine next week to discuss resuming suspended credits aimed at cushioning the effects of the crisis.
The protesters denouncing the hardship biting hard in Ukraine poured into Independence Square, focal point of the “Orange Revolution” in 2004 that swept Yushchenko and other pro-Western politicians to power.
The demonstration was the largest in Ukraine since the 2007 parliamentary election campaign.
“I think everyone in this square has one big wish — change life for the better. And there is only one way to do this, when we are rid of those now in power,” Viktor Yanukovich, the Regions Party leader and former prime minister, told the crowd.
“The faster they go, the faster we will restore order together in the country, the faster our factories will be back at work and the faster our economy will start to grow.”
Yanukovich said he was now suspending protests to give Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s government until April 14 to present a programme to tackle the crisis, which has hit markets for steel and chemical exports, and cut jobs and living standards.
ANTI-CRISIS MEASURES
The government has drafted measures to offset the effects of the crisis and parliament last week passed two bills to restore the flow of credits under a $16.4 billion IMF loan.
Tymoshenko has pressed for parliamentary approval of other measures sought by the IMF — to balance the finances of Ukraine’s pension fund and state energy firm Naftogaz.
An IMF statement said it had received “strong assurances by (Ukraine’s) president and the prime minister about their intention to obtain parliamentary approval” of the laws. It said a mission would arrive in Kiev by the middle of next week.
Yanukovich’s party, the largest in parliament, disrupted the chamber’s proceedings for two days this week, demanding an overall anti-crisis plan. It has long called for early elections of both the president and parliament.
Yushchenko said he would agree to two early elections if such a decision took account of other measures to be undertaken.
“I am ready to take a decision on early presidential elections,” Yushchenko, quoted by Ukrainian media, told journalists in western Ukraine. “I am unafraid of any sort of election, and that includes a presidential election.”
Yushchenko had earlier denounced as illegal parliament’s decision to call an Oct. 25 presidential election. The assembly is empowered to call an election but the poll was expected early in 2010 at the end of the president’s five-year term.
Yanukovich leads opinion polls with Tymoshenko close behind. Yushchenko trails, his rating reduced to single figures.
