KIEV, Dec. 6 – Ukraine’s main opposition parties on Monday failed to mount any significant protest against the authorities three days after police dispersed a rally in downtown Kiev.

Batkivshchyna, the party led by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and several smaller opposition groups have pledged to resume the protests on January 22, after the New Year and Christmas holiday period.

The future protests will focus on demands for early parliamentary and presidential elections to help Tympshenko strengthen her position and perhaps to return to power.

“The authorities have declared a war on us,” Batkivshchyna said in a statement. “We take on the challenge, and we will prevail.”

About 1,000 protesters showed up for a rally on Monday, a fraction of what the opposition parties had expected, after the police dispersed the protest camp on Friday morning.

The parties tried to organize the new rally at the European square, just one block away from the Maydan Nezalezhnosti, or the Independence square, where the original protest had been dispersed.

About one thousand police were deployed in the area on Monday in order to prevent the protest from growing.

The original protest, involving mostly small business owners, began on Nov. 22 at Maydan as a spontaneous reaction to the Tax Code approved by Parliament on Nov. 18. The protesters complained the code was reducing taxes on big corporations. Increasing pressure on small businesses and could cost abut 1 million small business jobs, according to opposition lawmakers.

President Viktor Yanukovych, yielding to the protesters, vetoed the legislation last week and had submitted amendments to Parliament, easing tax pressure on small businesses.

Less than a day after the amendments had been approved by Parliament and signed by the president, police had surrounded up the protesters, and the authorities had dismantled the protesters’ tent camp downtown Kiev.

The action was taken as Batkivshchyna had been increasingly cooperating and leading the protest towards purely political protest, as opposed to an economic protest aimed against higher taxes.

Batkivshchyna said that Yanukopvych showed “his true face” by dispersing the protest rally on Dec. 3, and directed its criticism at the president’s policy.

But Yanukovych responded by accusing the opposition of attempting to hijack the protest and turn it into a political issue.

“I would not advise my political opponents to mix politics and economics in one pile,” Yanukovych said Monday.

He also said that lawmakers will again review amendments to the tax legislation early next year, potentially setting stage for new protests.

“Probably at the beginning of the next year we will get back to the Tax Code in order to approve amendments without any haste that would reflect the needs of the state and the interests of the people,” Yanukovych said. (tl/ez)