Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 24, 1993 TAG: 9303240119
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRYAN BRUMLEY ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
NATION IGNORANT ON FREEDOM RETURNS TO POWER STRUGGLE
Russians have embraced Western words like "democracy," "congress" and "president," but they are having trouble grasping the underlying concepts. The fight in Moscow is less about constitutional fine points than about power, ambition and wealth, reformers say."We have one foot in the democratic tradition, but one foot still in the totalitarian tradition," said Viktor Boriswuk, an expert in U.S. and Russian constitutional law and a consultant to the Congress of People's Deputies.
President Boris Yeltsin, a former Communist Party boss, and members of the Congress of People's Deputies - more than 80 percent of whom are former Communists - have had trouble shedding the authoritarian past.
Facing a Congress that regularly amends the constitution to augment its own power, Yeltsin on Saturday proposed a solution that smacked of absolutism: "a special order of governance" that would allow him to ignore decisions by the legislature and the Constitutional Court.
Rule of law is the heart of the issue, said Congress Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov, a leader of the campaign to remove Yeltsin from office.
"The conflict between the legislative and executive authorities is not personal in character," said Khasbulatov, who stood side by side with Yeltsin in resisting the attempted Communist coup in 1991.
But Khasbulatov's critics say he is driven by personal ambition and a desire to please lawmakers who want to keep their jobs as managers of state-owned factories and farms. Control of that property gives them wealth and power they would lose in a democratic, free-market system.
The conflict, said former Communist Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev, concerns "property and ownership, as up to 95 percent of all property in the country is still owned by the state."
The Congress opposes Yeltsin's efforts to allow private ownership of land and to transfer state-owned industries and business to individual shareholders.
Yakovlev, the architect of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost policy, on Monday urged "democratic forces to support private property" and "prevent society from sliding down to authoritarian rule," ITAR-Tass reported.
The fight between the president and Congress concerns who is the legitimate heir to power. And the lack of Western-style checks and balances makes it an all-or-nothing contest.
Under Communism, the tightly disciplined party controlled all organs of government. After the party fell, the Soviet-era Constitution never was amended to define the powers of the three branches of government, each of which is less than 3 years old.
The Congress was elected in 1990, when the Communist Party still controlled nomination procedures.
Yeltsin was elected to the newly created presidency in 1991 in Russia's first democratic balloting.
The Constitutional Court was created in late 1991. But the 13 justices are nominated and approved by Congress, virtually blocking them from acting as independent arbiters between the legislative and executive branches.
The subordinate role of the court was evident after Yeltsin appeared on television Saturday night to proclaim emergency rule leading up to a national referendum on April 25.
Within hours of Yeltsin's address, Court Chairman Valery Zorkin - the equivalent of a chief justice - raced to the television station and appeared nationwide, along with some of Yeltsin's severest critics, to accuse him of attempting a coup.
Yeltsin's attorneys never were given a chance to argue his case. His aides said the president, unable to appeal to the court, would appeal to the people. And they said he would ignore any moves to oust him by a Congress he believes is trying to restore Communism.
Khasbulatov, who has accused Yeltsin of trampling Russian law, himself cuts blithely through the tangle of legislative procedure.
At an emergency session Sunday of the standing Supreme Soviet legislature, Khasbulatov overrode the lack of a quorum and asked lawmakers to approve a resolution requesting the Constitutional Court to review Yeltsin's actions.
When the resolution failed by six votes, several lawmakers stepped forward and said they had forgotten their electronic voting cards, but favored the measure.
"Resolution passed!" Khasbulatov declared, without bothering to check the rolls. The process to remove Yeltsin was in motion.