Some of you may already be familiar with the ‘iron law of the semi-presidential one’ – if your country appears on average more than once a week in the posts, then it is in trouble! Well, Ukraine is currently suffering under the weight of this law.

Kyiv Post reports that the Ukrainian parliament has passed a law that amends the Verkhovna Rada’s rules of procedure and that changes the rules determining the formation of coalition governments.

As reported in a previous post last week, Art. 83 of the Constitution states: “A coalition of deputy factions in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine shall be formed … within one month after the date of termination of the activity of a coalition of deputy factions in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine”.

However, the amended rules of procedure allow individual deputies to register their support for a coalition rather than allowing only factions as a whole to do so. The aim is to make it easier for coalitions to be formed, specifically for newly-elected President Yanukovych to form a majority government.

I am no constitutional lawyer, as some will know better than others, but this law is surely unconstitutional.

Unsurprisingly, Yanukovych’s defeated presidential opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, has denounced the change as unconstitutional. The Ukrainian politics blog, Ukraine Today also considers it to be unconstitutional.

Presumably, this law will be challenged, which will mean that the Constitutional Court will be forced to side with either the president or the opposition, thus politicising it. If a government is found to have been formed unconstitutionally, then, arguably, all of the actions of that government are null and void, which would raises major problems of governance. Ukrainian politics is notoriously volatile, but President Yanukovych’s term of office does seem to have begun rather inauspiciously.