Ukraine ? Yulia Tymoshenko, the telegenic symbol of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, predicted Monday she will be back in the prime minister’s job next spring and said the president fired her because he feared her popularity.

She said she would regain the job when parliament exercises its new right to choose the prime minister.

“I am sure that our team will win parliamentary elections because we have honest aims,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I don’t think that this is just a possibility, I am certain of it.”

The position of prime minister will become far more powerful than the presidency under constitutional changes expected to take effect Jan. 1. That has made March’s parliamentary ballot a critical battlefield for Tymoshenko and her one-time ally, President Viktor Yushchenko.

Yushchenko fired her as prime minister Thursday, accusing the government she led of spending more time squabbling than fulfilling the promises of the Orange Revolution. He also suggested her government had sided with certain business groups to the detriment of Ukraine.