Ukrainian president will be asked to nominate Party of Regions member for premier
The parliamentary faction of Ukraine's Party of Regions is collecting signatures as it prepares to ask President Viktor Yanukovych to nominate a Party of Regions member as a candidate for the country's prime minister, the faction's MP Mykhailo Chechetov told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.
"The Party of Regions faction has started to collect signatures in favor of a request for the president to submit exclusively a Party of Regions member as a candidate for prime minister to parliament for consideration," Chechetov said.
The faction "is not ready to support a representative of the opposition for the post of premier," he said.
Chechetov, however, declined to name the Party of Regions' possible candidates for this job.
Party of Regions members will vote for any candidate to be nominated by the president, he said.
"Any candidate who will be nominated by the president [in the session hall] will be approved by a larger number of votes," Chechetov said.
Party of Regions MP Vladyslav Lukianov, for his part, said that the faction has not yet made its decision concerning a prime ministerial candidate whom it will be ready to support.
"The faction has not met and has not yet adopted such a decision," Lukianov told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.