Luzhkov Doubts Yeltsin Healthy Enough to Go on
MOSCOW, Oct. 16, 1998 -- (Agence France Presse) Yury Luzhkov, the Moscow mayor and one of Boris Yeltsin's closest
supporters, added his voice to a growing chorus of skeptics Thursday by wondering aloud if Russia's president was well enough to
continue in office.
His remarks came as Russia's top court launched a probe into the highly charged issue of whether the ailing and politically isolated
Yeltsin has the constitutional right to seek re-election in 2000.
Luzhkov, who late last month made it clear he was prepared to succeed Yeltsin in office, said it was possible that the Kremlin chief
would be forced to step down and call early elections as all was not well with his health.
"I cannot rule out a situation that will lead to early presidential elections in Russia or the early resignation of the president," Luzhkov
said in comments broadcast by the private NTV television channel.
But the mayor said that he was not trying to oust Yeltsin to further his own political ambitions.
"The Constitution says if the current president does not cede his powers himself then we must bear it," Luzhkov said, adding
nonetheless: "I can see like all other citizens from afar that all is not well with him."
A pugnacious populist who tirelessly campaigned for Yeltsin's reelection in 1996, Luzhkov has joined a crowd of Russian politicians
who have watched Yeltsin's health deteriorate and distanced themselves from the Kremlin as a result.
Yeltsin ruled out in August resigning from the job which he has held for seven years, but also indicated that he would not put his
name forward for another presidential term in elections due in 2000.
Russia's Constitutional Court launched a hearing Thursday into whether Yeltsin has the legal right to stand, should his health
improve and he change his mind.
Russia's often-vague Constitution limits presidents to two successive terms. But Kremlin legal aides argue that since Yeltsin was
first elected in 1991, when Russia was still a Soviet republic and its constitution did not yet exist, that term should not count.
Following his illness-plagued re-election bid in 1996, Yeltsin gave conflicting signals on whether he would run for president again.
Close aides and big businesses encouraged him to keep the option open and the opposition guessing.
But Yeltsin has become a shadow of the president he was early this year. And while the Kremlin chief has largely hand-picked the
court and its judges rarely dare rule against the Kremlin's position, few observers believe the 67-year-old president would seek
reelection.
"I think the answer to this question is clear," said Mikhail Matyukov, Yeltsin's court envoy, hinting that the president would not want
to stand again.
Parliament's lawmakers insist the case is important even if Yeltsin, hobbled this week by bronchitis that cut short his first foreign
trip since June, no longer sets his sights on four more years in 2000.
"The question is very serious. We are discussing whether the existing legal limits on a head of state's rights have any real value or
not," said Aleksei Zakharov of the liberal-opposition Yabloko faction.
"If the government wants its citizens to conscientiously follow the law, then the first thing it must do is to put restraints on itself,"
Zakharov said.
Yeltsin, however, displayed renewed interest in the court's work Thursday when he again broke doctors' orders and appeared in the
Kremlin to meet with one of its judges.
"Your career is progressing so quickly that we never even find the time for a chat," Yeltsin told the judge, Anatoly Sliva, who until
being confirmed to the court this week served as the president's personal representative in the upper house of parliament.
Russia's president is hampered by a devastatingly low approval rating that plummeted to near zero after the government in August
gave up on his two chief economic accomplishments of the post-Soviet era -- a stable ruble and low inflation.
The Public Opinion Foundation last weekend reported that 1 percent of the respondents said they would vote for Yeltsin should he
run again. ( (c) 1998 Agence France Presse) russiatoday.com
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