RUSSIA: Opposition Vexed By Constitutional Shortcomings

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW, Oct 8 1996 (IPS) - Most ordinary Russians long ago stopped caring about the state of ailing president Boris Yeltsin’s health, but the opposition shouts on anyway, demanding that he stand down before the country sinks into limitless chaos.

Communist opposition leader Gennady Zyuganov warns of governmental collapse if Yeltsin’s condition worsens and he and ex- Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev says that even if Yeltsin’s forthcoming operations go well, “his health will not allow him to fulfil his presidential duties in full”.

“The government doesn’t fulfill its promises because it has no real power,” Zyuganov adds. “And presidential power isn’t functioning”.

But some observers warn not of chaos, but of paralysis while Yeltsin is in a sanatorium at Barvikha on the capital’s outskirts, where he awaits major heart surgery now scheduled for December.

“The Kremlin power record in this century has already demonstrated that a leader in his semi-comatose condition can suit rival political factions’ needs for years,” says Sergei Solodovnik of the Moscow Institute of International Relations.

He argues that the situation, of power without responsibility — or at least political liability — suits the lead figures in Yeltsin’s absence, prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and national security council chief Alexander Lebed.

“Ex-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev remained the number one man despite his malfunctioning brain, to say nothing of his high blood pressure and potato-munching speech.

“Boris Yeltsin now has every chance to imitate this suffocating experience, by giving working legitimacy to Chernomyrdin and in the meantime paving the ground for a future presidential campaign by general Lebed.”

If Yeltsin resigns on grounds of ill health, or dies, his powers pass to prime minister Chernomyrdin for three months until new elections are held. And though Yeltsin has suggested he wants to rule in good health or not at all, Chernomyrdin hints that Yeltsin’s stepping down is “out of the question”.

“I believe that it is my political and human duty to finish what has been started so that the sacrifices undergone during the first stage of reforms do not end up in vain,” Yeltsin has said.

He has already ceded partial control over several top ministries to Chernomyrdin, who will nominally remain the head of state up to the moment of operation.

But Russia’s constitution fails to address the question of what specifically should happen when a president is seriously ill or incapacitated.

Like most constitutions, it is clear on the line of succession. And like most constitutions, partly to deter potential abuse, it is hazy on at what point a head of state become physically unfit to rule, leaves it to the incumbent to decide, assuming that he is fit to do so, and trusting to luck that he is.

The relevant Clause 92.2 states: “The president of the Russian Federation ceases to perform his duties before his term is up if he retires, has a persistent inability to exercise his authority because of his state of health, or because he is removed from power (by impeachment)”.

And whenever the president “is not in a condition to perform his duties, the prime minister takes over for three months. Before this point is reached, however, someone has to decide what “a persistent inability” to govern is, but the constitution fails to say who or how.

“In the days the constitution was drawn up, people still thought that (as in Soviet days) these things lasted forever,” says Leonid Lazarev, the Constitutional Court’s director of administration on constitutional law. Most of those involved had a post-Soviet mindset from the Brezhnev experience, he argues. Few imagined that the issue of authority would ever come into question.

Not so, argues Oleg Rumyantsev, a former Supreme Soviet deputy and current advisor to the State Duma’s Law Committee, who claims that liberals on the original drafting group who led the 1993 constitutional convention plotted the whole present crisis.

An avowed Yeltsin opponent, Rumyantsev says that he had called at the time for a constitutional amendment that would set up a medical commission to rule on the president’s health, but it was rejected. “We are all witnessing Yeltsin’s degenerated state, but some wanted to ruin the constitution in order to keep him in power,” he now claims.

Yeltsin, 65, was hospitalised on Sep. 12 and his workload cut, according to Kremlin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky, to two to three hours a day.

The Russian leader has suffered three heart attacks since July 1995, and while Kremlin surgeons continue to plan for bypass surgery, speculation is rising that his physical weakness might yet make the operation both dangerous and ineffective. Even then he will then need at least six weeks to recover.

Yeltsin suffers from ischaemia, which restricts blood flow to the heart. Bypass surgery will enable blood to circumvent arterial blockages, but can do nothing for the damaged muscles of his heart.

Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov says his chamber may vote for constitutional changes to restrict the “unlimited” powers of the head of state. “Democracy begins when power emanates from legal and representative bodies and ceases when power is concentrated in the hands of one person,” he told the Interfax news agency.

“We can see there is a desire to govern in an authoritarian manner in Russia. The power of our president is in fact, unlimited,” he added, without specifying his options.

Liberal Grigory Yavlinsky accused the Kremlin leadership of a lack of coordination. “If Afghanistan is a problem for Russia, Chernomyrdin will say one thing, (chief of staff Anatoly) Chubais will say another and Lebed a third,” he says. “Three governments have actually been created in Russia”.

Yeltsin hit back last week in radio and TV to maintain that he was still firmly in charge, although TV pictures showed him looking tired and haggard.

Most observers agree that the political maneuvering surrounding Yeltsin’s illness reveals a fundamental instability in the post- Communist political system that can be blamed on the poor institutional strengths of the power branches in the country.

Other suggest that the matter is only to be expected, drawing parallels with the evolution of the U.S. democratic system, which they say was also challenged by similar explosions of economic growth and political change.

In America the result, says Andrei Piontkowsky of the Moscow- based Center for Strategic Studies, was a civil war and the rise of all-powerful business cartels like Standard Oil that at one point threatened the entire country.

“All this is very typical for early capitalism in every country,” he argues, “though in our country the situation is aggravated even by comparison with early capitalism in America, because in Russia the enormous wealth of the state has been distributed between semi-criminal bureaucratic clans.”

Few people on the streets have the time to worry about the historic detail and the few expressions of concern are voiced by the state media.

“I pray to the Lord, that Boris Nikolayevich (Yeltsin) recovers soon and continues to perform his duty,” writes pensioner Elena Ganina in a letter to the daily Rossiyskie Vesti. “I pray he will overcome as he did in critical moments of his life”.

Russia’s business community was more pragmatic and less supportive. On the announcement that Yeltsin’s heart surgery would be postponed until December, the Russian stock exchange dived dramatically — an extra price for the old man’s plight.