Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 12, 1990 TAG: 9003122851
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Long
Gorbachev, addressing a meeting of the party's policy-making Central Committee in the Kremlin, also reaffirmed the need for the Communists to yield their long monopoly on political power here and compete for popular support with other parties in free elections if they were ever to mobilize the people.
But he just as firmly upheld the party's orientation as distinctly Communist, not socialist or social democratic, and he insisted that the party retain its unified, national structure rather than become a federation of independent parties of the country's constituent republics.
Observing the fifth anniversary of his election as the party's general secretary, Gorbachev laid out a bold program of internal reform to reinvigorate the 18.8 million-member Soviet party and keep it in power as the Communist parties in other socialist countries collapse.
These changes will not come easily, Gorbachev said, for if successful, they will bring fundamental realignment of power within in the party and then in the nation as a whole.
For example, the party's regional first secretaries, who for decades have effectively been appointed by Moscow to rule over areas as large as many countries, in the future wouldbe elected at local party congresses - and then have to lead their parties in regional elections against opposition groups.
But the new party rules effectively rejected demands by many reformers for the abolition of the city and regional party committees and the networks of committees subordinate to them, and Gorbachev said that the fate of the Communist parties in Eastern Europe had demonstrated the danger of dissolving party organizations.
The new party rules, which have gone through more than 40 drafts already, could still encounter serious opposition during the Central Committee meeting, which was scheduled to continue today.
The urgency for such internal party reforms was underlined dramatically as the newly elected Parliament of Lithuania voted later on Sunday to re-establish its independence and thus begin the process of secession from the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev has waged a personal campaign to keep Lithuania within the Soviet Union, moving even faster toward a multiparty political system and promising a new federal structure for the country to persuade the republic and other nationalists to remain.
But the latest reforms, which likely will be debated further in the months leading up to the party congress opening here July 2, look toward a long-term transformation of the political system rather than quick changes.
"The rationale behind revamping the rules," Gorbachev told the Central Committee, according to the official news agency Tass, "is to make the party member the focus of party life by guaranteeing him the broadest possibilities to share in charting and implementing party policy, shaping higher party bodies and supervising their activities."
The reforms appear to fall short, however, of requiring rank-and-file election of all 4,700 delegates to the party congress in July - a measure that would prevent local party leaders from sending only their own people - although the reforms do promise "real autonomy" following adoption of the new rules and party program.
The focus of much of the party's activities, Gorbachev said, will become "the struggle for political leadership" and winning popular support for its program in the country's open elections and the broader context of the growing democracy here.
At present, the party's role as "the leader and guider of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and public organizations" is guaranteed by the Soviet constitution.
This monopoly on political power is scheduled to end later this week when the Congress of People's Deputies, the national parliament, amends the constitution to guarantee the equality of all political movements and public organizations.
The retreat from absolute power is essential, Gorbachev contended Sunday, if the Soviet Union is to reform its political and economic system and involve all elements of society in the effort.
The Congress, which was scheduled to meet today, was also expected to consider further constitutional amendments establishing an executive presidency with broad powers, a post designed to give Gorbachev the authority that his supporters assert he needs to press ahead with perestroika, his reform program.
Members from the radical Inter-Regional Group of Deputies decided Sunday to oppose the presidential amendments, believing that they created too powerful a position with insufficient checks and that the country must first agree on the new relationship between the central government and the constituent ethnic republics.
But the group was not expected to oppose Gorbachev's election once the post has been created, saying that they disputed the need for the new powers, not Gorbachev's leadership.
The Communist Party newspaper Pravda, reviewing Gorbachev's five years as the country's leader, said Sunday that with executive powers, which he does not have now as the party's general secretary or the chairman of the Congress of People's Deputies, he would be able to "act as a powerful consolidating force in our society."
Replying to Gorbachev's critics, who complain loudly that five years of reform have brought political chaos and no real economic gains, Pravda said the country's progress has been greater than anyone could have envisioned then.
"We have come a tremendous distance over a short period," Pravda said, "in democratization and political openness, in transforming our economy, in our national self-awareness, in establishing the new political mentality, in giving priority to common human values in the international arena and in freeing the creative powers of human beings, which although a goal in itself also guarantees the continuing revolutionary changes."
by CNB