Ukraine’s Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich believes that the Ukrainian Constitutional Court will pronounce President Viktor Yushchenko’s decree to suspend powers of the Ukrainian Supreme Rada of April 2 unconstitutional. He made the statement in an interview to the First Channel, the prime minister’s press office informs. “We see no variants that the decree can be pronounced constitutional,” Yanukovich added.

According to the prime minister, the experts also find the decree unconstitutional. “Today, we have an expert opinion of various legal companies, including those independent ones, whose ratings are first in the world. We have comments from leading world lawyers and politicians as well, those, whose opinion must be respected by Yushchenko, whose opinion is respected in the world,” the premier noted. According to him, it was Yushchenko’s mistake to stress the necessity of implementing his decree instead of the constitution. “The decree is a by-law, and the constitution is the basic law,” Yanukovich said adding that if the president does not agree to the decision of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Rada can consider a question of impeaching him.

As REGNUM reported earlier, the Constitutional Court is now considering the question whether the presidential decree on dissolving the Supreme Rada is constitutional. All the 18 judges are present at the hearing, including those five, who refused to continue their work earlier because of political pressure.