Brussels, 17/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - “Ukraine lives in a democratic way” and the country “will find a democratic solution” to the current crisis, said Viktor Yushchenko on Tuesday, again rejecting all eventuality of resorting to force. After his meeting with the president of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, the president of Ukraine pledged to accept the constitutional court's verdict. That same day, the court was beginning to look at the government majority appeal against dissolution of parliament as decreed on 2 April this year. Pending a decision foreseen for early May, efforts for breaking the deadlock are focused at the political level, the Ukrainian president said, sounding a note of caution against possible pressure or irregularity
“Any party of the conflict will accept the decision of the constitutional court, but there is a range of circumstances that need a political decision. The main attention today is paid to forming a political decision and to finding out what led to the parliamentary crisis”, Mr Yushchenko told the press. This position was, moreover, confirmed by the prime minister of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, who, at the very same time during a visit to the Council of Europe, was saying in Strasbourg: “We shall uphold any decision by the constitutional court and we shall implement it”.
Confident that a political solution can be found “if there is good will”, Mr Barroso encouraged the parties to act in full respect of the law and democracy. “All political forces are now going the way to find this compromise”, Mr Yushchenko stressed, pointing out that “the right time for putting things in order has already come”. “I am speaking to those who try to bring people from the regions to the capital: they should not do this”, he stressed, while in Kiev many people had amassed around the building of the constitutional court in support of the government coalition.
To the backdrop of this affair, Mr Yushchenko took the view that the origin of the crisis lay in the fact that renegade deputies had individually gone over to the government coalition, despite the fact that the constitution provides only for political formations to take part in a coalition. “The essence of the problem is that they applied anti-constitutional arrangements to form this coalition”, said Yuschenko, speaking of “usurpation of power” as this practice has led to “revisiting the election that took place last year”. (ab)