By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Liberal journalists and moderate political leaders have bitterly condemned the draft constitution released by President Boris Yeltsin on November 10. Major criticisms of the document include charges that it violates federalism, concentrates exorbitant powers in the hands of the president and would be almost impossible to amend.
An earlier version of Yeltsin's draft was endorsed in July by his hand-picked Constitutional Assembly. Then, after the president sent in army tanks to forcibly disband the old parliament on October 4, a special working group of his staffers revised the document, removing concessions that had been made to regional interests and opposition forces.
The Federation Treaty, signed in March 1992 and codifying the rights of Russia's 21 ethnically defined republics, was struck out of the draft. All mention of regional sovereignty was excluded. A provision that new presidential elections were to be held in June 1994 was dropped.
Although a new parliament was shortly to be elected, the deputies would not be entrusted with debating and adopting the country's "basic law". Nor, despite Russia's nominally federal character, would the draft constitution be put before the legislatures of the provinces and republics.
Instead, the document was to be submitted to a referendum on December 12, the same day as the parliamentary vote. Russians were to have barely a month to consider the charter that was meant to decide the whole framework for the country's future political processes.
On November 3 the final draft was presented to a meeting of regional leaders. They refused to endorse it. Yeltsin went ahead anyway, signing the document and authorising its publication.
Executive power
Even before full details of the text were known, world chess champion Garry Kasparov — an outspoken supporter of the pro-Yeltsin "Russia's Choice" coalition — was voicing disquiet. "I definitely see some major problems with a very powerful executive in the country because of Russia's historic traditions of the suppression of other powers of government", Kasparov was quoted as saying.
After the draft was released, one of the first well-known figures to condemn it was social democratic leader Oleg Rumyantsev. "The draft has two main objectives", Rumyantsev told journalists on November 11. "To legalise the authoritarian regime that has come to power and to preserve the vision of the state and society held by the radical liberals.
"Boris Yeltsin has lost his self-control. His personal ambition has been exposed."
Under the new draft, journalist Sergei Chugaev wrote in an article for the English-language Moscow Times, "parliament becomes a purely decorative organisation".
"The text ... gives citizens complete freedom to live their lives", Chugaev observed. "Once every four years they elect a president, which is the only way they have of controlling the government. Otherwise they do not get to meddle in the government's affairs. Power in Russia will be unified, and will belong to one person — the president."
Chugaev is a political commentator for the Moscow daily Izvestia, which for several years has provided Yeltsin with strident and essentially uncritical support.
A writer for the English-language Moscow Tribune noted on November 12 that the draft provided a "blueprint for autocracy ... tsarism without even the doctrine of divine right". In the past this paper, which is aimed largely at Moscow's foreign business community, has also given Yeltsin solid backing.
The most devastating attack came in an extensive article by Vladimir Lafitsky in the November 17 issue of Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Founded in 1990, Nezavisimaya Gazeta has emerged as the leading mouthpiece of the socially critical Moscow intelligentsia. The paper has moved abruptly into opposition as the president's policies have become openly anti-democratic.
The sum of the president's rights under the draft, Lafitsky argued, "has no analogue in the world, and creates such a concentration of power that the state system can only be described as authoritarian".
The judicial branch of government is described as "weakened, and deprived of the ability to function as an authority". The Constitutional Court, which before September 21 repeatedly thwarted Yeltsin's efforts to overthrow the former parliament, is to be increased from 13 to 19 members. With the right to nominate all federal judges, Yeltsin will find it easy to stack the body with his supporters.
Token parliament
Opponents of Yeltsin's draft condemn the ruthless subordination of the new parliament to the president. In part, this will be achieved through an unapologetic slap in the face for democracy. After a transitional period, the upper house of the legislature will no longer be elected. Instead, it is to consist of one deputy appointed by the legislature, and one by the executive branch, in each of Russia's 88 regions.
The great majority of provincial executive chiefs are direct Yeltsin appointees. Close to half of the members of the upper house would thus be directly and personally beholden to the president. This would make measures such as constitutional amendments and impeachment of the president impossible, since the two-thirds majority required would be out of reach.
The new parliament, Lafitsky observes, is to be deprived of powers invariably enjoyed by parliaments in democratic countries. "There are no functions of control over the activity of the executive authority. The draft does not provide for the possibility of parliamentary investigations, or for deputies to address questions to ministers."
The new legislature's "power of the purse" will be so circumscribed as to be meaningless. The consent of the government will be needed for the introduction of money bills of all kinds. There is no indication that legislators will be able to amend the government's draft of the state budget.
Should Yeltsin not be satisfied with the decisions of the new parliament, disbanding it will not require tanks as in the past. If the lower house rejects three presidential nominees for prime minister in succession, the president will be able to declare the chamber dissolved. Arranging the resignation of the prime minister, and then naming three unacceptable replacements, will not be difficult. To give the president extra flexibility, the draft allows him or her to dismiss the lower house if it refuses a demand that it vote confidence in the government.
As Lafitsky remarks, the threat of early dissolution that hangs over the parliament "turns it into a powerless and dependent organ".
Property
Not all observers have expressed distaste for Yeltsin's draft. According to TASS, US State Department spokesperson Michael McCurry praised the document for its guarantee of private property and its promotion of a free market economy.
The president's exceptionally broad state of emergency powers will allow the suspension of freedom of the press, of speech, assembly, privacy and other civil liberties. But infringements of the draft's detailed list of property rights are banned.
With his close supporters likely to poll no more than about a quarter of the votes in the elections, Yeltsin has set out to ensure that he will nevertheless be able to rule as he sees fit. There is no particular likelihood that the draft constitution will be rejected by voters. Though expressing outrage, opposition parties have not campaigned vigorously against it, preferring to use their meagre resources to try to get their candidates elected.
All the same, the constitution is unlikely to be long-lived. Constitutions are supposed to express a consensus within the ruling group in a society on the framework for resolving political struggles. In Russia today there is no such consensus, since the president insists on a framework that will allow conflicts to be resolved exclusively to his advantage.
The economy is collapsing, and the government's strategies are sharply denounced by competing elements of the new nomenklatura bourgeoisie. Yeltsin's draft systematically denies these factions any political mechanism that they might use to assert their interests.
If these struggles cannot be settled within the framework of the constitution, they will be settled outside it. The tanks may not have had their last outing.