big oligarchs are back in style

[side note: First a word of apology from me: I've been visiting family on the East Coast and couldn't get online (useless T-mobile) long enough for an entry last week. And, of course, our family trip happened at the moment of complete collapse of four months of wrangling to be absent. Hopefully you were reading Foreign Notes. Now, where to begin?]

Who knew they were so friendly?The orange coalition has collapsed and the Socialists have joined the Party of Regions and the Communists [also from RFE-RL]. Moroz and his inner core stampeded over any principles they might have had to cut a deal with PoR. After a few days of podium-blocking, the PoR freed up the Rada last week. By that time, a back-room deal must have been cut, because they voted Moroz the Speakership (flanked by a Communist Vice Speaker, God help us all). Yanukovych isn't officially PM yet, but Moroz joined with the rest of the "anti-crisis coalition" to nominate him. [image: Ukrainksa Pravda]

Why did they do this? Well, they said they'd never join in a coalition with Poroshenko as PM. Except, amazingly, he dropped his candidature in response to this ultimatum. So... money and power then.

At this point I'd just like to take you back into the misty past of three weeks ago, when the Socialists made this sarcastic statement:

"The SPU faction addresses Parliament factions able to form an [orange] coalition to stop seeking  profitable offices, to immediately sign a coalition agreement, to form head Parliament bodies and the government, to solve the main economic and social problems, as well as to make efforts to break the long-term deadlock in the country."

"As to the Party of Regions and Our Ukraine, for an example, it is high time to stop dissembling and finish what they began to do," stressed SPU.

Could they have committed a more blatant act of hypocricy than joining RoU themselves? No. Well, way to go, Socialists: against all odds you managed to usurp Our Ukraine as the most disgraceful member of the now-mooted orange coalition.

Testing The Buyability of Deputies

To the infinite regret of the nation, it doesn't look like we're going to get a chance to see how many PoR deputies would defect rather than stay in opposition. Instead, we will watch more fair-weather friends of orange defect (Moroz: "I think I felt a drop, didn't you feel a drop?"), followed by the intemperate-weather friends. Eventually it will be down to friends through the black tempest - years of uninterrupted opposition. And I'm going to bet it's going to be a small opposition: Moroz is already trying to entice over NUsters.

In the meantime, though, there's a circus going on in the big ring! [From Ukrainska Pravda and translated by the Ukraine List]:

It turned out that representatives of the Party of Regions took their places in the hall early in the morning [Tuesday, 7/11], because they had received information that at 8 AM the Tymoshenko Bloc and Our Ukraine would block the podium.

The "Regionals" took under their control the "Rada" system and the press gallery. They stood in friendly rows, and also organized a corridor to allow Oleksandr Moroz to reach the Speaker's place.

Our Ukraine and the Tymoshenko Bloc observed this calmly, possibly because prior to that they "sabotaged" (stashchyly) the keyboard of the computer that was used to register deputies' cards in the session hall.

Even so after a few minutes a skirmish erupted between Tymoshenko Bloc and Regional deputies beside the "Rada" system. Oleksandr Turchynov was at the epicentre.

The tussle fizzled out, and deputies moved on to a verbal slugfest. Regionals were shouting "Glory to Moroz" and "Out with Yulia (Iuliu het')." In response, Our Ukraine and the Tymoshenko Bloc were shouting "Shame on Moroz" and "Moroz is Judas!"

Yushchenko is unlikely to dissolve Parliament and start up new elections, like Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko has called for. He says he doesn't want Ukraine to regress to pre-2004 undemocratic methods, but all he's done so far is make this strongly-worded statement to the new coalition: "Just don't change any policies, please." And with that I'll leave him to his irrelevance.

It's going to be noisy for a little while yet. The next time something of significance happens, I'll comment.