A top lawmaker from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party has announced the candidates most likely to become Ukraine’s next prime minister.
In an Aug. 6 interview with the Novoye Vremya magazine, incoming lawmaker David Arakhamia said that the short list of candidates includes four people: Andriy Kobolev, CEO of state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz; Yuriy Vitrenko, executive director of Naftogaz; Vladyslav Rashkovan, who represents Ukraine in the International Monetary Fund executive board; and Oleksiy Honcharuk, Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff.
Arakhamia did not state who was the leading candidate. All four of the men he mentioned have previously been reported as potential candidates for prime minister.
“The sooner you say, the less chance this person will become (prime minister),” he said.
A successful IT businessman under the nickname David Braun, Arakhamia is a potential head of the Servant of the People faction in parliament.
He told Novoye Vremya that the parliament will likely not start its work before Sep. 3.
“This is the most realistic scenario. I would give it a 90-percent chance,” Arakhamia said.
Previously, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he wanted Aug. 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day, to be the date of the ninth convocation of the Verkhovna Rada’s first session.
Arakhamia also named several other top candidates for key cabinet positions. He said that Ruslan Riaboshapka, currently deputy head of the presidential office in charge of anti-corruption policy and legal reform, has high chances of becoming the next prosecutor general.
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He also said Dmytro Razumkov, the current head of Servant of the People, is the main candidate for speaker of the parliament.
“Dmytro Razumkov will be speaker. He is the inevitable candidate,” Arakhamia said.
Deputy speaker of parliament
Shortly after Arakhamia revealed the list of top candidates, Razumkov indirectly confirmed that a representative of the opposition parties will be the next deputy speaker in the new Verkhovna Rada, Interfax reported on Aug.6.
While speaking to the pro-Russian Channel 112, Razumkov said that it would be right for the opposition — and not representatives of the presidential party, which won an unprecedented one-party majority in the July 21 election — to decide who will be nominated for this position.
“It’s logical, right, democratic,” said Razumkov.
At the same time, he said that there is still a vague understanding of which factions will be in opposition to the presidential party.
If the four other main parties in the Rada — rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk’s Voice party, former President Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna, and the pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life — will all be in the opposition, each of them will nominate their candidate for confirmation by parliament.
“I hope that, finally, the opposition in the Verkhovna Rada will find some common ground,” Razumkov said.
