From the NY Times:
Yeltsin Seeks to Give Communists a Greater Voice
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By MICHAEL GORDON
MOSCOW -- One day after he dismissed his prime minister, President Boris Yeltsin of Russia signaled a new approach to governing on Monday by giving a greater voice to the Communist-led forces in Parliament that have sought to frustrate economic reforms.
The new power-sharing arrangement is intended to build support for
Yeltsin's new choice for prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin.
But the move raised fresh questions about whether the Kremlin is
retreating from the urgent economic reforms demanded by
Chernomyrdin's predecessor, Sergei Kiriyenko, who was ousted over the
weekend.
With Russia in the grips of an economic crisis and the nation still reeling from yet another government shakeup, Yeltsin's new strategy for extricating the nation from its economic crisis remained unclear.
There were no details about new economic policies. Chernomyrdin said
he would not even announce his new cabinet until his appointment was
approved by the legislature.
But the tone of the Kremlin's message seemed clear. Under Chernomyrdin, a former prime minister who enjoys good political
relations across the political spectrum, the Russian government would be more receptive to appeals by the Communist opposition and more
solicitous of the demands of Russia's powerful bankers and financiers.
The 36 year-old Kiriyenko used to sermonize about the need for Russians to tighten their belts. Had he continued in office, Kiriyenko
planned to press this week for the Parliament's approval of an unpopular package of measures to reduce the looming budget deficit and bring order to the budget.
Chernomyrdin, however, is not talking about ramming a demanding
reform program through a recalcitrant Parliament. Instead, the Kremlin's emphasis Monday was on giving the Parliament and other influential groups more of a voice over the Kremlin's decisions.
Or as Aleksandr Shokhin, a key Chernomyrdin aide, put it on Monday, the aim is to form a new government, "backed by the majority of political forces in society."
Yeltsin's spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said that Chernomyrdin
would support the general effort to develop Russia's version of capitalism. But he added pointedly that under Chernomyrdin "we should expect serious changes."
There is, of course, no way Chernomyrdin can wish away Russia's
mountain of troubles. Russia's banks remain on the brink of insolvency. Moscow has yet to announce a plan to restructure its short-term debt. Its currency may continue to plummet.
There are also major constraints on Chernomyrdin's freedom of maneuver
because there is simply not enough money to go around. Russia needs to
slash spending to shrink the federal budget deficit. And Chernomyrdin
conceded on Monday that the government did not have enough funds to
bail out all of its troubled banks.
But some free-market proponents expressed concern that Chernomyrdin
would still yield too easily to the tycoons, such as Boris Berezovsky, who helped engineer his return to power.
Boris Nemtsov, the senior Kremlin aide and former governor of Nizhny
Novgorod, said on Monday that he would not serve in a Chernomyrdin
government because he had concluded the Chernomyrdin lacked the will
to challenge powerful financiers and monopolists.
"These issues are not likely to be solved in the Chernmyrdin government," Nemtsov said. "And since this is the situation there is no point for me to work in it."
Certainly, some investors seem to have concluded as much. Shares in
prom, Russia's huge natural gas monopoly, rose almost 20 percent on
Monday.
Before joining the Yeltsin government six years ago, Chernomyrdin
served as the head of the gas giant. And many investors believe the oil and gas companies will now be treated more leniently. In contrast,
Kiriyenko had sought to squeeze the energy sector for back taxes.
Chernomyrdin aggressively courted the Parliament before his recent
return to power and continued to do so on Monday.
To encourage Parliamentary approval of Chernomyrdin's appointment as
prime minister, the Kremlin announced on Monday that a new commission would be consist of Yeltsin government aides and members of the upper and lower houses of Parliament.
The purpose of the panel would be "to develop an anti-crisis program"
and perhaps discuss appointments to the new government,
Yastrzhembsky said. Yastrzhembsky said that Yeltsin had discussed the
arrangement on Monday with Gennady Seleznyov, the Cospeaker of the lower house of Parliament.
He said the commission "will become a very important institution in our political and social life. It will scrutinize the main content of our anti-crisis program. Different views will clash at its meetings, different versions of this anti-crisis program will be proposed. These battles will produce the contours of the future anti-crisis program."
The decision led the Communists to boast they had won a seat at the
table in a new "coalition government." It is too soon to tell if the
weakened Kremlin will actually cede substantial power to the Communists and other opposition groups. The newspaper Izvestia,
however, speculated on Monday night that the Communists would gain some key posts and that the government would back away from some
economic reforms.
"One can expect that some of the urgently needed anti-crisis measures
will not be enacted," Izevestia said. |
