Bezsmertny: We invite opposition to sit at a negotiating table

“We were trying to work out a common position towards the situation in the Ukrainian parliament yesterday and the day before,” the Our Ukraine faction leader Roman Bezsmertny said at today’s briefing.

“I want to announce some common positions. First and foremost, we don’t accept ultimatums as a form of negotiations. Moreover, we have taken the steps proving our respect for opposition and admission of its rights,” he noted.

“The Party of Regions has a majority in the Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhya regional councils and Crimean parliament. The rights of other political forces represented in city and oblast councils are not taken into account. They also have a right to be involved in state affairs,” he reminded.

“We have not given any grounds to say that we were going to violate the Constitution or the parliamentary rules. We haven’t submitted any draft resolution on the election of speaker and PM violating the parliamentary rules,” Bezsmertny said.

“The Council of the Coalition has not examined any document that would ignore the constitutional norms,” Bezsmertny emphasized.

“Thirdly, we do not like a strain of this ultimatum. It is aggressive. An ultimatum is a method of communication during combat operations and not in the Ukrainian parliament that has its traditions,”  he stressed.

“We support an idea to have a dialogue in the framework of the round table in line with the presidential proposal. The round table is to take place on Monday. The purpose is to find a way out of the situation. We don’t talk about distribution of committees. We talk about search of principles, which sphere of competence will belong to opposition and what the majority is to be involved in,” he noted.

“We always stood for information awareness of opposition and its right to make any critical remark with regard to power. But we are totally against giving the opposition a right to prevent the government from implementing its socio-economic programme,” Bezsmertny said.