New York Times - 09/10/98
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
MOSCOW -- As Russian President Boris Yeltsin pondered for a second day over who would be his next prime minister, the Communists threatened Wednesday to pursue impeachment proceedings if he
renominates Viktor Chernomyrdin.
The warning was a pressure tactic to induce Yeltsin to abandon Chernomyrdin. In the byzantine world of Russian politics, it was also a defensive maneuver to block him from dissolving the parliament.
"If Yeltsin comes up with Chernomyrdin for the third time, the Duma will raise the issue of impeachment," Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told reporters, referring to the lower house of parliament.
Yeltsin huddled with Chernomyrdin and Foreign Minister Yevgeni Primakov, who has been touted for prime minister by the liberal and Communist opposition, as speculation swirled that he might shuffle the
deck yet again and pick a new candidate.
As the president remained closeted in his Gorky-9 residence outside of Moscow, Russia's economy continued its downward spiral.
The Kremlin on Wednesday lifted tariffs on medicines, a belated effort to cope with shortages of drugs in pharmacies and hospitals.
But the scarcity of goods -- and old-fashioned profiteering -- has continued to drive prices skyward. The State Statistics Committee reported Wednesday night that prices rose by 36 percent during the first week of September.
The only apparent piece of good news was that the ruble rose somewhat in value. Even that was deceptive. The change, economists said, was largely the result of buying by banks and other customers who need rubles to pay their debts. It was not a vote of confidence in the economy.
The chaos in the marketplace was grist for the Communists, who have cast themselves as the champion of Russia's downtrodden and dispossessed.
With Yeltsin at Gorky-9, the Communists took center stage Wednesday. Declaring their willingness to form a government of national unity, they issued a platform echoing Soviet themes.
The Communists promised cheap credits to ailing factories and tariffs to protect Russian enterprises from foreign competition. Major industries would be renationalized. Salaries would be paid and savings
protected. There would be a crackdown on financial speculation.
Some of Russia's most ardent market reformers conceded that the left might succeed -- at least temporarily -- in securing a place for themselves in the Kremlin.
"In the present situation, of course, I cannot rule out the coming to power of a government with the participation of Communists or a government controlled by the Communists," said Yegor Gaidar, the free
market reformer and former prime minister. "I do not have any faith in a lasting Communist comeback."
The escalating crisis has led to a bitter round of finger-pointing. Anatoly Chubais, the former Kremlin aide who led the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, insisted that the government had made
every effort to stave off the devaluation of the ruble and satisfy the West.
But he told the newspaper Kommersant that Yeltsin had acted correctly by denying to the very end that the devaluation of the ruble was under consideration, saying that anything less would heighten the panic.
"So now the international financial institutions understand, despite the fact that we conned them for $20 billion, that we had no other way," he said ruefully.
The main focus, however, was on the wrangling over the prime minister post. Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's pugnacious mayor, who met with Chernomyrdin on Wednesday, said he believed Yeltsin would renominate Chernomyrdin for a third and decisive time.
Nobody could be sure, however, just what Yeltsin would do. Alexander Lebed, a Siberian governor and former general, predicted that Yeltsin would yield to the demands of the Communist opposition and nominate Primakov or Yuri Maslyukov, a Communist deputy and former Soviet economic planner who served briefly in the Yeltsin government before resigning.
The Communist-led parliament has often engaged in loose talk about impeachment. The impeachment procedures, however, have taken on a new urgency.
The parliament has twice rejected Chernomyrdin. Under Russia's constitution, a third rejection would force the dissolution of the body and new parliamentary elections -- unless the Communists come up
with their own legislative tactic to block it.
That is why they are threatening to vote impeachment before Chernomyrdin's nomination is taken up again. A vote to impeach would preclude the president from dissolving the parliament for several months,
according to the constitution.
To pursue impeachment, the Communists need the support of 300 of the 450 votes in the lower-house of parliament, a margin that Zyuganov insisted was attainable.
It is much harder to actually remove the president. Any decision to oust Yeltsin by the lower house of parliament would have to be approved by a two-thirds vote of the upper house of parliament, which has been more supportive of the Kremlin, and by the courts.
The likely result would be a constitutional crisis. The Communists would insist that the issue was impeachment. Yeltsin could insist on his own reading of the constitution and press for the disbanding of
the parliament. He could even ask the legislature's upper house to declare a state of emergency.
The Communists are not the only ones working on impeachment. The deputy chairman of the parliament's impeachment commission is Yelena Mizulina, a member of the liberal Yabloko party, which is headed by Grigory Yavlinsky, who is a fierce critic of Yeltsin.
She said in an interview that the commission is planning to complete the articles of impeachment this week so that that the parliament can vote on them as early as Monday.
The main charges will center on Yeltsin's role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, his decision to shell the parliament building in October 1993 and the war in Chechnya.
The talk of impeachment was not the only step the Parliament took to protect itself -- and its perquisites -- Wednesday. Deputies also voted to pay themselves wages through the end of the year even if the
parliament is disbanded.
Some leading officials said none of the maneuvering would stop Yeltsin.
Asked who Yeltsin would nominate, Luzhkov said: "You need to know Boris Yeltsin. I think Chernomyrdin."
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