KIEV, Nov. 28 – Ukraine’s newly elected lawmakers will hold their first session on December 12, but President Viktor Yanukovych’s Regions Party has so far failed to create a coalition that would control the majority of seats in Parliament.

Oleksandr Yefremov, a senior member of the Regions Party, said the group secured 223 seats, three short of the simple majority required to approve appointment of a new prime minister.

“As of this moment we have 223 applications in a folder to join the Regions Party group,” Yefremov said.

If the party fails to secure a stable majority, Yanukovych will probably not accept resignation of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, analysts said.

The Regions Party won 185 seats in the 450-seat Parliament at October 28 elections, but no other party had agreed to join the coalition with them.

This forced the Regions Party to focus negotiations on trying to recruit at least 41 independent lawmakers to secure the simple majority.

The failure to secure the majority comes despite growing pressure on the elected lawmakers, both independent and affiliated with other parties, to join the coalition.

Iryna Kupreychyk, a member of the opposition Batkivshchyna party, who won a seat in Parliament in Okhtyrka, the Sumy region, was forced to leave the country temporarily due to the pressure.

Kupreychyk, who owns Nyva-Agrotekh, a local farming company, said regional government officials had quickly advised her to join the coalition.

“If she fails to do so the officials said Nyva-Agrotekh would not have space for growth,” Mykola Klochko, the leader of the local Batkivshchyna branch, said.

The developments come amid mounting disagreements between the Regions Party and three opposition groups over new Parliament’s agenda and what the lawmakers have to do first.

Opposition lawmakers on Wednesday walked out of a meeting with the Regions Party following the disagreement over voting procedure.

The opposition groups want a bill approved that bans lawmakers from using voting cards of other lawmakers.

Although the constitution directly prohibits lawmakers from using each other’s cards, this norm has been widely violated in Ukraine with lawmakers giving their cards freely to their colleagues whenever they cannot attend a session.

This allowed the Regions Party to approve legislation even when most of their lawmakers had not been in attendance.

If the demands from the opposition groups are met, this would make life even more difficult for the Regions Party, which will struggle to approve any legislation because many of their lawmakers are simply not attending sessions.

But Yefremov, seeking to get the opposition parties more cooperative, said this will change now.

“All our lawmakers elected on the party-list and those elected in individual constituencies, every one of them, told me that they will be attending Parliament,” Yefremov said. (tl/ez)