Attempts by the ruling parliamentary coalition to revoke the constitutional amendments adopted in 2004 curtailing presidential powers show that President Viktor Yanukovych is seeking absolute power, shadow prime minister Serhiy Sobolev, of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, said today.

"Yanukovych - and it is obvious to everybody today - is building a dictatorship in Ukraine, but not a dictatorship of law but a dictatorship of lawlessness," he said.

"They need absolute power in order to turn Ukraine into their private corporation in which they will squeeze super profits out of the people and take delight in seeing their photos in the Forbes list of billionaires," Sobolev continued. He added that the authorities were acting hypocritically as they had insisted "in every possible and impossible way" in 2004 that the constitutional amendments be adopted and now they wanted them cancelled.

A request by 252 MPs was sent on July 14 to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine asking it to examine the constitutionality of the amendments limiting presidential powers. Justice Minister Oleksandr Lavrynovych has said that the amendments were passed with procedural violations. "All the parliamentary factions without exception doubt that the changes of 2004 were adopted in a constitutional and legitimate manner," he was quoted as saying by the UNIAN news agency today.

Lavrynovych explained that the request sent to the Constitutional Court related to how the amendments had been passed rather than their content. He also recalled that the Council of Europe repeatedly expressed regret in 2004-05 that some of the changes were "inconsistent with the principles of democracy and rule of law".