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Yeltsin's agony goes on

EVEN before the final official results of last Sunday's Russian referendum were announced on Tuesday, it was clear that Russian President Boris Yeltsin, despite being given a vote of confidence in himself and his policies, would not achieve the success hesought.

Mr Yeltsin may yet be faced with having to summon authoritarian powers against opponents who still show signs of trying to destroy both him and his reform programme.

Essentially, Mr Yeltsin is still stuck in the stalemate which led him to declare emergency powers on March 20, then to withdraw them under parliamentary pressure, and eventually call last week's referendum.

In other words, Mr Yeltsin still faces the dilemma arising out of trying to pursue change amidst a political deadlock between the executive and the legislature.

from breaking this impasse, the referendum looks likely to further sustain it. No rapprochement between Mr Yeltsin and his opponents is in sight. The struggle for power will continue.

Even before the referendum took place, the Congress of People's Deputies (CPD) chairman, Mr Ruslan Khasbulatov was alleging that voting was rigged. Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi tried to derail the Yeltsin referendum campaign, and bolster the opposition, with charges of corruption by those close to the president. Conversely, Mr Rutskoi suddenly found that many of the privileges which he had enjoyed as vice president had been suddenly removed on the orders of Mr Yeltsin.

When Mr Khasbulatov recently met former United States president, Mr Richard Nixon, and a leading US-Russian specialist, he stressed that he was all in favour of a Russo-American alliance. Indicative of the sheer opportunism which too often passes as politics in democratic Russia, during the referendum, Mr Khasbulatov frequently conveyed the opposite impression by attacking the United States for backing Mr Yeltsin instead of him.

But seeing political developments rationally and listening to the preferences of the people is, clearly, not yet what Russian politics is all about. On the contrary, there is an edge of desperation to Mr Khasbulatov's latest comments as he assails the relatively free press for ''information terror'', and compares Mr Yeltsin's referendum campaign to the propaganda once manufactured by Hitler's aide Joseph Goebbels.

Thus Mr Yeltsin still has to grapple with the grim choice of either allowing the government of Russia, and his reform programme, to wither in the face of charged opposition - or to summon up authoritarian powers with which to try and end the crisis.

On the surface, Western leaders' congratulations on Mr Yeltsin's victory appear appropriate. The organisers of Mr Yeltsin's referendum campaign astutely got around the problem of seeking a mix of ''yes'' and ''no'' votes in answer to the four referendum questions, by making the most of the jingle ''da, da, nyet, da '' (yes, yes, no, yes).

Initially, Mr Yeltsin had been inclined to seek ''yes'' votes across the board on the grounds that it would be easier to advocate. But the popularisation of ''da, da, nyet, da'' enabled him to put across a slightly more complex voting choice.

Voters were asked to say ''Yes'', they had confidence in Mr Yeltsin, ''Yes'', they had confidence in his reform policies, ''No'', they did not want early presidential elections but ''Yes'', they wanted early elections for the Russian parliament. (Mr Yeltsin's six-year term expires in 1996. His opponents in the CPD, elected when the Soviet Union existed.) THE CPD inserted the question about reform on the referendum ballot precisely because it calculated that a majority of ''no'' votes on the economy would embarrass Mr Yeltsin and block his path forward.

Mr Yeltsin's opponents, likewise, expected that, at worst, the electorate would probably endorse fresh elections for both the presidency and the parliament. Instead, while the electorate has not decisively rejected another presidential election, it has emphatically endorsed another parliamentary poll.

But since 50 per cent of the total electorate had to approve such a measure, but only 64.4 per cent of voters turned out last Sunday, the final percentage of the total electorate in favour of fresh CPD elections was 41.4 per cent, not enough to secure the passage of the proposal. By contrast, 32.7 per cent of the electorate wanted a new presidential vote.

However gratifying these results are for Mr Yeltsin, their limitations are obvious. The government which he heads, desperately needs to take control of the central bank in order to tackle runaway inflation.

One Russian source claims that more rouble notes were printed by the central bank last February than in the preceding 30 years. While the banks printing presses continue to work overtime in this way, Western aid to assist monetary stabilisation will be on hold. But, under the old Soviet constitution, which is still in force, the central bank is under the control of the CPD, which is not about to give it back to the government.

There is no chance that the CPD will agree to the new constitution which Mr Yeltsin unveiled on the eve of the election. The proposed charter included a different type of bicameral legislature, one which the president would have the power to dismiss.

If it were introduced in the immediate wake of the failed August 1991 coup as an essential replacement, the charter might have been quickly accepted. Today, however, the only way in which the CPD members will agree to vote themselves out of office, and their parliament out of existence, is at the point of a gun.

Mr Yeltsin will undoubtedly try to use the referendum to regain lost political momentum. But it is doubtful that his opponents will help him on his way.

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