Elections called after fists of fury fly in Ukraine Parliament

KIEV: The speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament yesterday called for the chamber to be disbanded and early elections held after deputies got into an ugly brawl over a proposed new language law.
A draft law by President Viktor Yanukovich’s Regions Party rekindled an emotional debate in Ukraine where Russian is the mother tongue of most of the people in the east and south, while Ukrainian — the state language — predominates in parts of the center and in the west.
Fists flew among deputies in Parliament on Thursday and a crowd of about 150 people rallied yesterday outside the Parliament building, many of them bearing slogans in defense of Ukrainian language rights.
“Nobody is threatening the Russian language. It is Ukrainian that has to be saved. This is no joke: yesterday there were fights in parliament but tomorrow there will be fights on the streets,” said Yarema Goyan, a writer, who was one of those protesting.
Opponents of the move regard use of Ukrainian as a touchstone of sovereignty and say a growing encroachment of Russian will only keep Ukraine in Russia’s sphere of influence.
The issue sets the ruling Regions Party — many of whose deputies have a power base in densely populated Russian-speaking industrial areas of the east — at odds with mainstream opposition parties such as that of jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party said the proposed law was a cynical move by the Regions to win back disenchanted voters in time for a parliamentary election in October
It warned that the law would lead to Ukrainian being eclipsed as a language in key areas and divide the country in two. Tymoshenko herself, in a statement on Friday, described it as “a crime against Ukraine, the nation, its history and the people”.
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