Kiev, Ukraine – Parliament on Tuesday rejected President Viktor Yushchenko’s choice for prime minister, handing him a stinging defeat less than two weeks after he dismissed his Orange Revolution team amid an escalating corruption scandal.
Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, meanwhile, cleared two of the president’s aides of corruption but said an investigation into abuse of power continued against one of Yushchenko’s closest allies, Petro Poroshenko.
Lawmakers gave acting Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov only 223 votes, three fewer than needed to be approved.
He will remain as a caretaker prime minister while negotiations continue. Yushchenko’s chief of staff, Oleh Rybachuk, predicted the president would offer Yekhanurov’s name up for a second vote “in several days.”
But the defeat in parliament demonstrated how much Yushchenko’s hand has been weakened after breaking with his main Orange Revolution ally, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who received a record 373 votes when she was named to the post in February.
Yushchenko dismissed her and her government Sept. 8 and Tymoshenko’s supporters linked up with the other opposition parties to block Yekhanurov’s candidacy.
For many Ukrainians, Tymoshenko symbolized their revolution, a charismatic orator with charm and appealing ethnic symbolism.
She rallied hundreds of thousands who massed in Kiev last year to denounce fraud by the former government in the presidential election and force a new vote, which Yushchenko won.
Yekhanurov, a business-friendly economist who prefers a low-key approach, was seen as a sharp contrast from the charismatic and politically ambitious Tymoshenko, who alarmed investors with her interference in the marketplace and her large-scale re-privatization program.
