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Al-Ahram Weekly 26 Aug. - 1 Sep. 1999 Issue No. 444 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 26 Aug. - 1 Sep. 1999 Issue No. 444
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Focus Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters To put in Putin
By Dominic ColdwellIn a recent interview with Izvestia newspaper, Russia's former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin said that "becoming the biggest banana republic in the world -- and without any bananas at that -- is not an enviable prospect." But ironically, Stepashin's own position was no more enviable when Russian President Boris Yeltsin decided to replace his prime minister with Vladimir Putin, the head of the internal security service FSB, one week later -- as if to confirm Stepashin's fear that the country could soon slither into anarchy.
It was the fourth time in 17 months that Yeltsin booted a prime minister out of office -- and this although most observers give Stepashin kudos for reviving the country's economy.
Industrial output in July rose by 12.8 per cent vis-à-vis the previous year, marking the fastest growth since the start of economic reforms in 1992. With a falling rate of inflation, the government could possibly reach an account surplus of 7 per cent of GDP by the end of the year. And even if Russia does not boast any bananas, Stepashin can at least pride himself on having secured the country's first IMF loan since last year's financial crisis. So why did Yeltsin sack his prime minister?
Unfortunately, economic prospects are not as rosy as they look.
Because Russia's current export boom rests on rising oil prices and last year's rouble devaluation, positive growth might not be sustainable for long. Meanwhile, the government continues defaulting on the payment of wage arrears to workers in order to keep inflation down. But at the same time, consumers have had to grapple with a 15.2 per cent increase in gasoline prices since the end of June, raising fears that Russia's poor will be left high and dry once the winter sets in.
Still, Stepashin was less controversial than most former office holders. In an interview with the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, he said that the real reason why he had been fired lay in his refusal "to service the interest of a certain group which decided I wasn't reliable enough". In the end, Yeltsin's move thus points at the clout of Russia's clans.
On the same day that he axed Stepashin, the president quietly signed a decree to raise the number of state representatives on the 11-person board of Gazprom from four to five. The producer of a quarter of the world's output in natural gas and Russia's biggest company, Gazprom contributes to one fifth of the country's tax revenues. More significantly, it financed Yeltsin's re-election campaign in 1996, after the president began his campaign with single-digit approval ratings.
Most analysts believe that Yeltsin is tightening his grip because Gazprom has contributed finances to Russia's independent broadcasting station NTV, which is owned by the Media Most group.
The television channel has been a mouthpiece for popular opposition figures like Moscow's Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and former Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov. In the aftermath of Stepashin's ouster, Primakov agreed to lead a left-wing electoral platform into the 19 December parliamentary elections for the Duma, Russia's Lower House of Parliament, after Luzhkov's "Our Fatherland" party had locked step with the country's governors in the "All Russia" movement.
In the long run, the "Our Fatherland is All Russia" coalition, however, looks fragile. Primakov already clashes with governors over his belief that regional leaders should be appointed rather than elected. Nor is it clear whether the ambitious Luzhkov will be happy playing second fiddle to Primakov. According to Boris Nemtsov, who leads the right-wing "Just Cause" movement, "there is no room for two bears in the same den."
But since a recent poll found that Primakov's movement might bag at least 28 per cent in the upcoming ballot, Yeltsin is trying to fill the lair of power himself.
Russian journalists believe that business tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a close confidante of Yeltsin's influential daughter Tatyana Dyachenko and a traditional rival of Media Most founder Vladimir Gusinsky, has been plotting to unhorse Gazprom's Chief Executive Rem Vyakhirev in order to cut NTV's financial lifeline.
Berezovsky is already said to have won considerable influence over the government-controlled ORT television channel, which has recently been showering Media Most with heavy vitriol.
At the beginning of the month, Berezovsky also took over the Kommersant journal and fired its editor at about the same time as tax police raided the headquarters of Media Most and a state-owned bank slashed its credit lines to Gusinsky's concern.
Still, there are hopes that ultimately Russian voters will not be influenced by an information blackout. In the eyes of one journalist, "given the levels of distrust in this country, the more consolidated the media are, the less influence [the tycoons] may have. One should not forget that Yeltsin himself came to power at the beginning of the 1990s without any access to the electronic media."
Thus, the president's current caprices disguise a more important trend at the grass-roots level. Regardless of official restrictions, Russia's citizens seem to be developing an appetite for pluralism. In the words of another journalist, "The press may have come together in 1996 to support Yeltsin's re-election, but it was a voluntary unification. If the oligarchs now try to unify the media by force, their gains will be insignificant compared to their losses."
Predictions that Primakov's movement might make gains instead also hint at the vitality of Russia's democratic opposition. Before parliamentary elections in 1995, Yeltsin had decreed the formation of both a right-wing and a left-of-centre party according to the Western model. But the "Our Fatherland is All Russia" coalition was founded outside the pale of presidential approval and might yet upset Yeltsin's stated plan to install Putin as his successor following presidential elections on 9 July 2000.
In an initial reaction to Stepashin's removal, Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party, voiced the concern of many disgruntled voters when he noted that "Yeltsin rolled the country back 50 years. Now, he is trying to roll it back to the Middle Ages. It is only monarchies that name heirs. In democratic countries the sovereign power resides with the people."
It is difficult to miss the irony in the current configuration. Although Yeltsin initially rose to fame as an anti-communist pro-democracy advocate, he has since become considerably less meticulous about upholding freedom of expression. At the same time he has been opening Russia's economy to vested Western interests, and toed the line of multi-lateral institutions which have given scant relief to Russia's impoverished masses.
The IMF loan that Stepashin recently obtained will be used entirely towards servicing debt on maturing credit. But while Russia is expected to repay US$ 3.8 bn this year and US$ 4.5 bn next year -- not including interest -- the IMF has merely agreed to release US$ 1.9 bn in 1999 and US$ 2.6 in 2000. And it has made payment contingent on dwarfing Russia's civil service by 41,000 employees. Not surprisingly, Luzhkov has criticised the IMF for indulging in economic "micro-management".
As part of this management, critics say that Yeltsin has also been muting dissent, pelting former Minister of Justice Pavel Krasheninnikov out of office after he refused to outlaw the Communist Party (CP) for supposedly encouraging "extremism". While Krasheninnikov conceded that "it is not possible to say that there are no violations [of the law] in the CP" he "did not find any grounds to take a decision to liquidate the party." As a result, unnamed officials in the Kremlin reportedly told him, "you have one problem: you always cite the law." Valentin Kuptsov, a Communist Party leader, has also lamented that his group was "under constant pressure".
But in the end, the question remains why Yeltsin is suffocating Russia's democratic opposition one year before his term expires.
If the crackdown on the CP is an indication of things to come, Yeltsin might use special powers to keep his tenure on life support after the end of his final term in office. Declaring a state of emergency might be helpful insofar as the Constitution prevents the president from dissolving Parliament in its first year after the 19 December elections. Yeltsin has already signalled his desire to rewrite constitutional provisions on the declaration of a state of emergency. Both the current conflict in Daghestan and plans to possibly merge Russia with Belarus could supply an excuse for granting him special powers. Although the president has repeatedly denied planning to suspend the rule of law, Putin has been more precise, saying last week that special legal regulations for the "hot spot" in Daghestan would soon enter into force. Bananas or not, Yeltsin could soon roam his big Russian cave all alone.
