Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Milk who wrote (13285)	7/3/1999 12:41:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 17770

ANALYSIS-Yeltsin battles on 3 years after election 03:42 a.m. Jul 02, 1999 Eastern By Timothy Heritage MOSCOW, July 2 (Reuters) - Three years after he was re-elected Russia's president, Boris Yeltsin is still waging battles on many of the same fronts as in his hour of victory and the jury is out on his eight-year rule. ''Let us not divide the country into the victorious and the vanquished,'' Yeltsin declared the day after he defeated Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov in an election run-off on July 3, 1996. ''Together we will revive Russia.'' Russia still faces deep political divisions and the revival of the country of almost 150 million people, the world's second biggest nuclear power, remains a distant dream. As a measure of the resentment over Yeltsin's rule, which stretches back to his first election victory in 1991, he has only recently survived efforts in parliament to impeach him. Moscow is dependent on foreign loans to stave off economic disaster, most foreign investors are still waiting on the sidelines and violence remains a threat in the North Caucasus, although the Chechnya war raging three years ago has ended. Yeltsin, who ducked out of view just before his election victory because of a heart problem, is still dogged by health problems. He also has no obvious successor to continue his policies when his four-year second term ends a year from now. So many questions linger about the achievements of the Yeltsin years that newspapers are openly speculating that he will consider his job unfinished when his term ends and that he may not be ready to step aside. Behind him stands a close circle of aides, widely known as ''the family.'' Russian media say these aides are uncertain whom to back to replace Yeltsin when his term ends and are looking for ways to extend the 68-year-old president's hold on power. ''Since the family is unsure of its choice of successor, it cannot help but consider the possibility of prolonging Yeltsin's presidential term,'' said Vyacheslav Nikonov, a political analyst who was part of Yeltsin's campaign team in 1996. One way could be to declare a state of emergency because of unrest somewhere in Russia, perhaps in the North Caucasus, and use this to justify the cancellation of elections. Another would be to push ahead with plans to forge a union with neighbouring Belarus and appoint Yeltsin as the head of the new union. The Kremlin denies it is planning anything unconstitutional and says the presidential election will go ahead as planned. Even so, Yeltsin has made clear he is determined to do all in his legal power to prevent the Communists winning a parliamentary election due in December and to remove the threat of a Communist winning the presidential poll six months later. The fact that the Communists remain a force on the political scene is a cause of chagrin for Yeltsin. The man who played an integral role in consigning the Soviet Union to the dustbin of history in 1991 won re-election in 1996 largely by raising the spectre of the Communists returning to power. Many voters saw him as the lesser of two evils. Yeltsin wants to be seen as the man who swept away Communist rule and installed a democracy. He can list as his achievements the fact that Russia has not slipped into civil war or broken up, and elections have become the normal practice. Moscow has won membership of the Group of Eight nations, otherwise made up of seven rich democracies. In the recent Kosovo crisis, it played a key role in negotiating peace. But Yeltsin's critics say there are more negative points than positive ones from his rule. Crime and corruption are rife, and most ordinary people have suffered hardship while a lucky few have amassed huge fortunes, often by illegal methods. The Communists say he wants to ban their party, that he is the main factor of instability and that nothing will improve in Russia while he remains president. Yeltsin is also struggling in his efforts to be remembered as the man who put Russia on the road to prosperity. He may eventually gain that honour from historians, but many Russians blame him for the hardships endured under economic reforms. His main economic achievements, reduced inflation and a stable rouble, were at least temporarily swept away in the crisis that hit Russia last August. That has left his popularity ratings in single figures and, with his health susceptible, it may be hard for him to lift those ratings in what should be his last year as president. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited