By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Among many of Russia's self-proclaimed democrats, the usual rhetoric of the need to defend "democracy" against "communist revanchism" was suddenly turned off in mid-May. In its place appeared an embarrassed, uncharacteristically low-key insistence on the need to stand by President Boris Yeltsin as he struggled to win acceptance for his draft constitution, in order to impose ... dictatorship.
There were some distinguished exceptions, real democrats among the flag-of-convenience variety. Perhaps the most outstanding were Stanislav Shatalin and Vyacheslav Nikonov. Shatalin is well known as one of the key figures behind the early moves, in 1990, to introduce market reforms.
In Nezavisimaya Gazeta on May 12 Shatalin and Nikonov published the most detailed and authoritative analysis yet of the president's draft for a "basic law". The authors picture a document that systematically violates internationally accepted principles of constitutional law in order to concentrate autocratic powers in the president.
The authors do not support the alternative, "Rumyantsev" draft championed by the Russian parliament. This draft is condemned as equivocal in its defence of human rights, biased in favour of the parliament, and so ambiguous as to be virtually impossible to interpret. What is needed, Shatalin and Nikonov insist, is a constituent assembly assisted by experts to make an exhaustive study of all the relevant proposals and to synthesise a balanced document.
The authors begin their criticism of the Yeltsin draft with a study of its treatment — vital for a multinational state — of federalism. Their conclusion is scathing:
"The faults in the sections devoted to federative relations are so obvious that it is difficult to
understand the hopes held out by the presidential team that their draft will be approved by all the subjects of the federation."
The sections dealing with power and its application are seen as both strangely inept and monstrously flawed. A failure to give the president explicit control over the government (this power is exercised by the prime minister) is offset as follows:
"Our president, under the draft, can effectively do anything. Meanwhile, he or she need not answer for it, since responsibility for concrete policy lies with the government."
Personnel, the authors of the article note, are always crucial — and in Yeltsin's draft the president appoints and can remove government ministers, all federal judges and the higher commanders of the armed forces. Only in a very small number of cases, involving the prime minister, the chairperson of the Central Bank and the highest judges, is the approval of parliament required.
The president can call a referendum without reference to parliament, and is required merely to "promptly report" to it on the declaration of martial law or a state of emergency.
Separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches is crudely violated. The president's power to legislate by decree is unrestricted. The parliament has no right of veto over presidential actions, and should it object to actions by the president, the president can dissolve it. A new parliament need not be convoked for a disturbingly long period of 90 days.
Yeltsin's draft also foresees the president gaining broad control over the judicial branch, to the extent of being able personally to take over many of its functions. The power of the Constitutional Court — a persistent thorn in Yeltsin's side — is greatly diluted through the creation of a superior body, the Supreme Judicial Office, to which the president has the right personally to appoint a third of the judges. The Supreme Judicial Office has the right to sack any federal judge, at any level.
"So what have we been fighting for?", the authors of the article go on to ask. "We had a Congress of People's Deputies that could do whatever it liked, and now we have the chance to get a single individual who can do whatever he likes. That is not called democracy. More often than not, tyrants are elected."
Some may wonder how the hero of the August 1991 putsch could mutate into a despot. They ought not to be puzzled.
At the outset of perestroika in 1985, Yeltsin was not among the tiny band of dissidents enduring persecution because they put democratic rights above their careers and liberty. On the contrary, he was known as the hard-driving party boss of Sverdlovsk province — intolerant of sloth and corruption, fond of populist gestures and the acclaim they won him, but no democrat, and more than prepared to pursue his goals by coercive and autocratic means. Russians should not doubt that in Yeltsin's draft constitution, they are seeing the real Boris.