The Duma has its day

There may never be a dull moment in Russia, but the situation there is clearly now reaching a crescendo. For starters, as if symbolism was in short supply, is the spectacle of Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin the two emasculated leaders of the world's one present and one erstwhile superpower meeting to set Russia's colossal disaster to rights. It sums up, sadly but succinctly, how powerless either man is to halt Russia's nightmare and how each got himself into this mess with all the goodwill in the world. Boris Yeltsin today must be painfully conscious of chickens coming home to roost. As many difficulties as he faced in his dealings with Russia's notoriously recalcitrant parliament, Yeltsin has hardly done all he could to win its support. Monday gave the Duma its sweet revenge on a dictatorial president for the humiliation he heaped upon it only months ago by forcing it to rubber stamp his choice for prime minister: Sergei Kiriyenko, who later surprised his critics by his reformist conduct. At that time theDuma, which can reject the President's nomination for Prime Minister three times, was still intimidated by Yeltsin's power to dissolve it and call elections. The reason was simple. The President was more popular than the parliamentarians. The tables have since been spectacularly turned. Any threat of dissolving the Duma now must ring singularly hollow from a President who needs to be thankful for every day he spends in the Kremlin.Yet it would be unfair to the Duma to say that it is motivated entirely by vengeance. Chernomyrdin is hardly the man to lead Russia out of a crisis which was partly of his making. Yeltsin appointing him as acting Prime Minister was a shamefully self-serving act, and the Duma is right to reject it. Somehow it no longer seems realistic to expect Yeltsin to do any single thing right, and he is giving evidence by pressing Chernomyrdin's nomination a second time. The only wise course for him now is to accept the Duma's own suggestions for Prime Minister. For, even as Russia's politicsfalls apart alongside its economy, he should be trying to get the Duma behind him rather than opposite him. It could come to that, but meanwhile precious time is being squandered in a country which has no time to waste.

The West is desperately continuing to pin its hopes on Yeltsin, for it has no one else to pin them on. Witness Clinton's failure to call off his visit in spite of fears of comparison with Yeltsin, for that would only further damage Yeltsin. Yet Clinton is wrong. It is time the West realised that Yeltsin is no longer the man to push forward its agenda. It behoves it to stand aside and leave Russian politics to play itself out as it will. Of course there are huge risks in that for America and its allies, but they needed to have thought about that when they failed to give Russia unstinted support in its early days of reform. Yeltsin's replacement will more likely than not have communist or nationalist antecedents which so threaten the West. But it is helpless now. Russia will not even see aserious attempt to address its predicament till Yeltsin is gone. A firm leadership tackling Moscow's multifarious crises is in the world's interest as well as Russia's. It should not try to prop a President who has outlived his utility.

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