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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Chernomyrdin Returns: End of the Yeltsin Era?

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

The sensational but simultaneously expected decision by Russian President Boris Yeltsin to fire Sergei Kirienko's government and to appoint Viktor Chernomyrdin, dismissed only five months ago, Russia's new acting Prime Minister may mean not only the next personnel move of the state's leader.

Observers in the Russian capital say that these days another issue is being resolved: the succession. They also think that the fact of Chernomyrdin's return to the Premier's office is also an advance for the future and a real chance for him to become a new Russia's President and the only candidate from the party of power. The other Friday when he appeared in the lower house of the Russian Parliament, he already looked like a leader of a grand opposition to Kirienko's government, an opposition that in fact had united Russia's entire political and business elite from the Communists to Chernomyrdin's Our Home is Russia and from Boris Berezovsky to the oil and gas tycoons.

Apparently, the unanimous Duma's non-acceptance of government measures was also a well planned demonstration to the President that Kirienko's government enjoyed no support at all or anywhere. Valentin Yumashev, a close friend of Berezovsky and the Presidential Administration head asserted the same in the Kremlin. Thus, the other Sunday evening Yeltsin made his stunning decision.

Chernomyrdin's supporters celebrate the victory and think that now the "new old" Premier is close to real power as never ever before. Chernomyrdin left office as a political bankrupt: Yeltsin demonstrated by his edict that the Premier who was already considered a real candidate for the presidency can disappear from the political surface in the twinkling of an eye. During his five months absence from the political scene he did not become a public politician, people started to forget him, and journalists were getting bored at his rare press conferences. His inability to express own thoughts when Premier was considered an interesting peculiarity of the government head while during his dismissal it became a barrier which like the Great Wall of China screened him off not only from the mass media but also from the society. And now such a comeback in the role of savior of the Fatherland, in the role of a real successor to Yeltsin blessed personally by the President, and in the role of a statesman irreplaceable in a time of crisis! No wonder that there is a victory celebration at Chernomyrdin's headquarters, and Our Home Russia parliamentary faction's leader Aleksandr Shokhin says that return to the former situation is impossible when there were vice-premiers in the government just to counterbalance its head. There is also nothing strange in the fact that all the "non-Chernomyrdin" people are being pushed aside from the power: Boris Nemtsov has already left, Anatoliy Chubais' future is quite vague – at least Shokhin already proposed removing Chubais from the political arena completely. A supposedly strong Premier comes to the White House and he does not need any competitors.

However, it is still not champagne time for Chernomyrdin's people. Indeed, Yeltsin waived his power for the Prime Minister. The President apparently ceased to struggle fight for his own political future. However, I would not bury Yeltsin until he leaves the President's seat, for in the immediate future Russia will face a number of crises and, who knows, maybe in a few months Yeltsin will have again to play the role of national savior – this time from Chernomyrdin's government. Still, even if we suppose that Yeltsin decided to sit like the Queen of England to the end of his term and his epoch is over, this could only mean the end of Yeltsin's epoch but not the beginning of Chernomyrdin's.

Quite significant is the fact that Chernomyrdin's supporters were in euphoria because of his comeback but, who knows why, they do not even mention Russia's current woeful economic condition, which is not the result of the five months of the Kirienko team's activity but rather an aftermath of Chernomyrdin's five years of semi-reforms, the result of establishing a formal market economy prompted in fact by clan and lobbying interests. Indeed, Kirienko's cabinet turned out to be unable to change the situation because it was irresolute and always late to take unpopular but necessary measures. There is no way for Chernomyrdin's cabinet not to convert into an oil and gas lobby team, and such a team is unlikely to improve the situation. Moreover, in order to look like an opposition leader and a man of consensus Chernomyrdin gave the Duma faction leaders plenty of promises including even establishing a coalition government that will implement an anti-crisis program worked out by the Duma. One can imagine what a program that would be! Meanwhile, the economic crisis is a sad reality in Russia, and Chernomyrdin, in order to save to situation, will probably have to take such measures which will not only bury his hopes for the presidency but completely exclude him from the political life of the country. Or he can give up on this, and make halfway decisions. Then a situation with no elections and presidents will appear, and the federal power system will simply die like the similar system of federal power in the Soviet Union died once upon a time.

There is also a less global circumstance: Chernomyrdin owes his appointment not only to his own authority and the Duma's non-acceptance of the Kirienko government but also to a grand intrigue of Boris Berezovsky, one of the main strategists of the Kremlin's under-the-carpet policy. Moreover, Yeltsin viewed the new government as a Chernomyrdin-Berezovsky government, and now the CIS executive secretary counts on getting a key vice premier post in the new government. Thus, Shokhin was evidently in a hurry to state that there will be no vice premiers to counterbalance the Prime Minister and especially that Chernomyrdin and Berezovsky have managed to establish a good relationship. Ukraine's President was made certain of this when the duo arrived on the same plane to greet him on his birthday. At the same time Berezovsky is quite an independent person with own political and business interests which can be different from those of Chernomyrdin. Thus, the Chernomyrdin-Berezovsky government in case of a deep financial and economic crisis in Russia, catastrophe with the ruble, and collapse of the bank system can become for Chernomyrdin a springboard to the presidency or a political grave.

Moscow

"Old new" Russian Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin discussed in a telephone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart Valery Pustovoitenko the possibility of visiting Kyiv in early September, the Ukrainian Premier's Press Secretary Olena Hubina told Interfax.

 

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