Experts with the Situation Modeling Agency are predicting that the fight between the President and the Cabinet of Ministers for influence on the regional elite will escalate before the next presidential elections.
Ukrainian News learned this from the agency report.
"It is evident today that it is about the time when the regional political elite will have to get determined who to place their stakes on at the upcoming presidential elections," said agency director Vitalii Bala.
In this context, the recent President's Secretariat's decision to prohibit the governors from attending Cabinet meetings may have unpredictable consequences for President Viktor Yuschenko.
"A policy like that will only heat up confrontation between the prime minister and the President and will precipitate the outcome," the expert said.
Bala also noted that today is a turning point for representatives of local authorities regarding their future career.
"Their future career depends on who they place their stakes on, [Presidential Secretariat Chief Viktor] Baloha or [Prime Minister Yulia] Tymoshenko," he said.
Both managers appointed to an executive government post, i.e. the governors, and elected heads of local councils, i.e. the mayors, will have to make a choice, Bala opined.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the President's Secretariat set the requirement to agree all business trips of the governors with the President.
Meanwhile, Tymoshenko, who is the leader of the eponymous bloc, thinks that isolation of the Cabinet from the executive branch in the regions is absurd.
The presidential elections are to take place in January 2010.
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