Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 16, 1990                   TAG: 9003162041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MICHAEL PUTZEL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                 LENGTH: Medium

GORBACHEV WIELDS THE POWER FROM WHEREVER HE SITS

If the prescribed schedule holds, the Soviet people will for the first time elect their own leader in 1995.

For the time being, however, Gorbachev will serve as the president elected by the Congress of People's Deputies, the country's representative parliament.

The new post gives the Soviet president - at least on paper - powers akin to those of the president of the United States.

It also sets similar limits, such as reserving for the legislature the right to make laws and control the government's purse strings.

While enjoying his new executive authority, Gorbachev may soon learn the frustrations of trying to push his economic program through a legislature less willing than he is to take radical action.

The Supreme Soviet already has shown its reluctance to enact reforms designed to phase in a market economy.

Although Gorbachev faces no serious challenger at the moment, the election results announced Thursday indicated there has been considerable erosion of his support.

Gorbachev won only 59.2 percent of the parliament's votes, and he was the only candidate.

Nearly 500 of the 2,245 members of the Congress voted against Gorbachev, and more than 400 abstained.

This suggests a considerable silent opposition to the new president, perhaps strong enough to stymie many of his proposed reforms.

With the new separation of powers, Gorbachev will no longer preside over the Congress of People's Deputies and its legislature, the Supreme Soviet.

The new presidency carries with it the power to propose legislation, negotiate treaties, veto bills and decisions of the Council of Ministers, appoint a Cabinet, declare war if the country is attacked, and under certain conditions impose presidential rule.

This means bypassing or overruling the local government to impose direct rule in a certain area of the country.

In a move to mollify opponents who claimed he was seeking to re-establish a dictatorship, Gorbachev gave up some of the emergency powers he had sought.

But the new president still will be a formidable figure.

At the same time, the Congress abolished the Communist Party's official monopoly on power and agreed to permit the growth of a multiparty democracy.

That, combined with the drubbing many party leaders have suffered at the polls in competitive elections, may lead eventually to the dismantling of the widespread party bureaucracy.

Nearly two years ago, Gorbachev first proposed strengthening the largely ceremonial presidency by making the president chairman of the Defense Council.

Gorbachev assumed the post himself but rarely appeared to exercise presidential power from that chair, except when conducting the Congress or Supreme Soviet.

Real power remained with the party, its Central Committee of a few hundred of the Communist elite, the handful of top leaders in the Moscow-based Politburo and Gorbachev himself.

The leaders of the military, internal security and KGB all were part of the party leadership apparatus, so there was little doubt who wielded the true power.

Until Gorbachev gives up the party leadership and takes his key advisers into the government with him, it may not be evident to what extent the party's role in decision-making is truly in decline.