KIEV, Jan. 27 – There is a “huge potential” for the dismissal of Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko at an emergency session of Parliament on Thursday, Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn said Wednesday.

The move, which is being heavily pushed for by the opposition Regions Party, would be a major setback for Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko just 10 days before the presidential election runoff.

The minister controls Ukraine’s 300,000-strong police force and has been openly supporting – and even campaigning for – Tymoshenko, who faces Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych in the runoff on February 7.

“The potential is huge for the personnel decision,” Lytvyn said in an interview with Channel 5 on Wednesday. “The interior minister should have been sticking with the position and be above the [election] process, not within the process.”

The Regions Party called for the dismissal of Lutsenko shortly after the police had sided with the Tymoshenko team in a conflict over a company that is printing ballots for the runoff vote.

The Tymoshenko government, without any major reason, moved to reshuffle the top management of the Ukrayina company two weeks before the runoff vote.

Opposition lawmakers suspected the new manager, loyal to Tymoshenko, would authorize printing 1.5 million extra ballots to give Tymoshenko an advantage, and had stormed the company’s headquarters in Kiev, clashing with police.

This comes as Lutsenko has been openly campaigning for Tymoshenko by traveling throughout the Ukrainian regions earlier this month.

“One cannot mix politics with such a critically important organ of state control as the interior ministry,” Lytvyn said.

Yanukovych garnered 35% support at the first round of voting on January 17, leading Tymoshenko by a comfortable margin of 10 percentage points. Most opinion polls predict Yanukovych would defeat Tymoshenko in the runoff.

This is the third time that a motion to dismiss Lutsenko will be submitted to Parliament since May 2009.

President Viktor Yushchenko sought Lutsenko’s dismissal twice last year – for embarrassing drunken melee and arrest in Germany, and for alleged failure to curb corruption.

But the minister survived due to political support from Tymoshenko.

The Regions Party is accusing Lutsenko of “systemic violations” of Ukrainian election laws and involvement in the election process, Olesandr Lavrynovych, a deputy speaker of Parliament and a senior member of the Regions Party, said. (tl/ez)