KIEV, March 25. /TASS/. Ukraine’s pro-presidential Petro Poroshenko Bloc party has supported Verkhovna Rada (parliament) speaker Volodymyr Groysman as candidate for prime minister.
"The party’s congress supports the initiative of [Petro Poroshenko faction leader Yuri] Lutsenko to nominate Groysman as candidate for prime minister and calls on the faction to consider this candidature and a new cabinet," the party said on its Facebook account.
According to the document, participants in the party’s congress insist on the resignation of the current cabinet of ministers. "The extraordinary congress of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc insists on the resignation of the cabinet of ministers. A key criterion for a new government should not be party affiliation but rather professionalism and commitment to the result," the statement says. "Ministers of a new government are to be first-class specialists capable of carrying out reforms so badly needed by Ukrainian society and which are envisaged by the association agreement with the European Union."
The party also called on the parliamentary forces to waste no time and form a new coalition, announce a program of actions and undertake collective responsibility for the formation of a new government.
Vitali Klitschko, the leader of PPB-Solidarity, told the congress that the government of current Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has lost confidence of society and the parliamentary majority and hence it must step down. "We are in constant contact with people and hear their discontent every day - people are not feeling any results of reforms. People don’t see what the government is doing to make their life better. I hear it all the way when I am in Kiev and when I am on my visits abroad. Our partners want to see real reforms, anti-corruption efforts, transparent investment climate," he said.
Journalists are not admitted to the Petro Poroshenko Bloc congress.