KIEV, July 24 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine’s Svoboda and UDAR parties announced Thursday their factions in the Ukrainian parliament were quitting the majority coalition, paving the way for the dissolution of parliament.
The majority coalition in the Ukrainian parliament, created after the February coup, had 256 members, the vast majority of them representing the erstwhile opposition parties of Batkyvshchina, UDAR and Svoboda.
With today’s resignations from the coalition, their number has fallen below the constitutional threshold of 226 members, giving the president the legal power to dissolve parliament in one month.
Non-party affiliated parliamentarians Viktor Baloha and Ihor Rybakov proposed a draft on the voluntary dissolution of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, earlier in June. Leaders of Verkhovna Rada factions UDAR, Svoboda and unaffiliated Member of Parliament Oleh Liashko authored the resolution proposing the move.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko urged parliament to vote to dissolve itself, stating that Ukrainians wanted early parliamentary elections, referring to the latest polls indicating that 80 percent of Ukraine’s citizens demanded a change of power.
