President Viktor Yanukovych will decide whether to fire anyone in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine based on his own information, and not because of pressure from the EuroMaidan protests, claims Oleksandr Yefremov, leader of the Party of Regions (PR) faction.
In an interview with Kommersant-Ukraine, Yefremov stated that the President is engaged in questions that emerged during the last meeting of PR legislators with the government. “Those criticisms of the government are being investigated now. I think that the President will draw his own conclusions,” Yefremov said.
“The criticisms were not solely about economic policies. We discussed all of the problems that we have in our country. The lawmakers openly expressed their views on the issues in the government system – corruption, abuse of authority by law-enforcement agencies, harassment of businesses, etc,” he clarified. “The legislators will issue their criticisms regarding the Cabinet of Ministers to PM Azarov who is going to summarize them and present them to the President.”
However, Yefremov noted, “the President acquires his information not only from the legislators, but also from a number of institutions that inform him about the state of affairs in Ukraine. He (Yanukovych) will make decisions independently and not in the way those at Maidan demand from him. You cannot do such things under pressure!” Yefremov exclaimed.
The leader of the PR faction also commented on the process of collecting signatures by the opposition parties and the Communists to make the government resign. “This issue can be put to a vote only in the next session of Verkhovna Rada. If the opposition says that the votes are there, let them vote. If this is merely noisy rhetoric, we should not talk about it at all,” Yefremov added.
“The government should work as usual. The more trust it has, the more trust is in the state, and thus Ukraine would be able to get cheaper funding in order to invest in its development,” he said.
Original in Ukrainian on the Ukrainska Pravda website:http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/12/25/7008323/
