KIEV, April 12. /TASS/. A number of deputies of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada said on Monday parliament speaker Vladimir Groisman had refused to move to the office of Prime Minister, which his predecessor Arseny Yatsenyuk quitted earlier on the same day.
Deputy Mustafa Nayem made a statement after a session of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc and Popular Front factions the Groisman had rejected the offer to take the post in the wake of alleged differences with President Poroshenko and Arseny Yatsenyuk over the candidates for positions in the new cabinet.
Nayem said later the differences had emerged over who was to become First Deputy Prime Minister. The initially recommended candidate was Vitaly Kovalchuk, the incumbent deputy chief of the Presidential Administration staff but Deputy Alexei Goncharenko said later that Groisman had eventually proposed to eliminate the position altogether after failing to reach consent on the candidacy.
The reports on Groisman’s refusal to move to the prime-ministerial office triggered a derogatory reaction on the part of his political opponents. Viktoria Syumar, a radical deputy representing the Popular Front caucus said it had already made concessions and agreed to Yatsenyuk’s resignation and to Groisman’s appointment.
She said the Popular Front had fulfilled all the obligations to the Petro Poroshenko bloc - it had voted for Yatsenyuk’s resignation and was ready to remain in the coalition. Also, it did not have any contradictions either with Groisman or the Poroshenko bloc, Syumar wrote in Facebook, blaming the disruption of the agreement between the Popular Front and the Poroshenko bloc on the problems Groisman had with other members of the bloc’s caucus.
Deputy Anton Gerashchenko wrote in the meantime that the partners, and President Poroshenko first and foremost, were to attain consent inside their own caucus and then to decide for themselves on where Ukraine is a parliamentary-presidential republic or a presidential-parliamentary one.
On the background of a discouraging reaction to decisions that had seemed to be almost adopted, the Poroshenko bloc deputies rushed to tell the public Mustafa Nayem’s words had been misinterpreted.
"Mustafa Nayem promised to make a statement but the problem is the session of the caucus was marked by outbursts of emotion in the process of discussions," Deputy Maxim Kuryachy said. "One of the keynotes (at the discussions) was that if no agreement was reached and if there was no teamwork in the future cabinet, Groisman would not be able to work in the situation of that kind.
Kuryachy accused Nayem of hasty conclusions and of an attempt to pass off someone’s desires for reality.
In the meantime, Vladimir Groisman did not offer any comments on the situation.