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Expert: Ukraine’s government to be change practically by half

According to the expert, the new government will not include “the key figure in the economic bloc” - Finance Minister Alexander Shlapak, and Minister of Economic Development and Trade Pavel Sheremet

KIEV, November 13. /TASS/. Ukraine’s cabinet will be renewed by about a half after the five political forces that have won seats in the country’s new Verkhovna Rada /parliament/ finally reach a coalition agreement, Alexander Sushko, the head of the International Renaissance Foundation, said on Thursday.

According to the expert, the new government will not include “the key figure in the economic bloc” - Finance Minister Alexander Shlapak, and Minister of Economic Development and Trade Pavel Sheremet.

However he said there was “a high degree of mistrust between the two key forces” - the Pyotr Poroshenko Bloc and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front. The former will have 132 seats in the new Rada, while the latter will take 82 seats. These two forces are seeking “not to let each other have a decisive instrument or to compensate for it by something else,” he noted.

Sushko stressed that the progress of reforms to be outlines in the coalition agreement would largely depend on who would take posts in the new government. “The coalition agreement is not reforms as such, it is a kind of declaration. The strength of political will to conduct these reforms will depend on those who will take posts in the new government,” he said.

Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin and Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak, are likely to retain their posts in the new government. Debates are likely around the candidacy of the interior minister. The Ukrainian publication Insider reported, citing its own sources, that President Pyotr Poroshenko had submitted to Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk a package of proposals on the formation of a new government. Thus, the president wants to see Vitaly Kovalchuk, a leader of the UDAR party, as first deputy prime minister, and Nikolai Tomenko /a Verkhovna Rada lawmaker and presidential adviser/ as a deputy prime minister.

Apart from that, the president wants to have a man from his team on the post of Ukraine’s interior minister. Probable candidates are Viktor Baloga, head of administration of former President Viktor Yushchenko and member of the Verkhovna Rada, and Anatoly Matios, the military prosecutor. The People’s Front however would like the current minister, Arsen Avakov, to retain the post.

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