KIEV, April 5 – President Viktor Yanukovych on Friday appointed Andriy Portnov, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s top lawyer, as a deputy chief of staff at his administration to supervise reorganization of the court system.

The surprise appointment comes a month after Portnov had led - and lost - Tymoshenko’s legal challenge of Yanukovych’s victory at the latest presidential election. It underscores the president’s quickly increasing political clout.

This comes days ahead of a widely anticipated ruling by the Constitutional Court on whether the governing coalition was created legally.

Portnov, one of the most influential lawyers in Ukraine, is thought to have powerful connections in the country’s legal system, an asset that had been frequently used by Tymoshenko.

“Ukraine needs deep reforms in all sectors. This work has begun, the president is confident that professionals must unite around this goal no matter what are their political affiliations,” Serhiy Liovochkin, the chief of staff at the Yanukovych administration, said.

“Andriy Portnov is a recognized specialist in the area of court system and law,” Liovochkin said.

Yanukovych said Thursday he “wanted very much” the Constitutional Court to rule in favor of the governing coalition, and said he will “pray to God” to secure the ruling.

Tymoshenko said last week that each hesitating judge at the Constitutional Court had been offered $1 million for the positive ruling, which would allow avoiding parliamentary election.

Yanukovych denied the allegations.

Meanwhile, at least 11 out of 18 judges at the Constitutional Court will probably uphold the ruling that Yanukovych wants, Ukrayinska Pravda online newspaper reported Thursday citing a source at the court.

The breakdown has become clear after the court had made a preliminary voting on the issue before releasing the final ruling that is expected within days, the source said.

Yanukovych seeks the ruling be made before April 11 when he travels to Washington to attend a nuclear non-proliferation summit, people familiar with the situation said.

The favorable ruling would strengthen legitimacy of his government that opposition groups claim has been formed through unconstitutional way.

The court is deliberating whether the governing coalition, created on March 11, has been created in line with the constitution.

The constitution demands the coalition to be created by groups, not individual lawmakers, controlling the majority of seats in the 450-seat Parliament.

Yanukovych’s Regions Party, the Communist Party and the Volodymyr Lytvyn Bloc - numbering a total of 219 lawmakers - created the 235-strong coalition after 16 defectors from two opposition groups had joined them.

But some experts said the positive ruling by the Constitutional Court may open way for Yanukovych to go further and even cancel amendments to the constitution that had been approved in December 2004.

The amendments, which switched most of powers from the president towards the prime minister, are widely blamed for the political stalemate of the past five years.

“I don’t rule out the scenario of cancelling the constitutional reform of 2004,” Volodymyr Fesenko, the head of Penta political consultancy, told Channel 5 television on Monday. “They talk about such scenario.”

Tymoshenko did not make direct comments concerning Portnov’s appointment, but she wrote in her blog that her party will soon begin a “great purge.”

“I promise that this will be the greatest purge in the Ukrainian politics in years since the independence,” Tymoshenko wrote. “We will decisively get rid of people that make our team weaker than has been demanded by the time.” (tl/ez)