Constitutional Act to Come Up for Referendum
// Russia and Belarus uniting in a hurry
Political Technology
Speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov announced yesterday that the draft Constitutional Act of the Union State of Russia and Belarus would be presented to the High Council of the Union for examination on November 15. The sudden burst of activity on the document, which has languished in working groups for several years, may indicate that the Kremlin sees it as a possible solution to its problem with the 2008 elections.
The latest meeting of the joint commission to prepare the Constitutional Act on the Union State of Russia and Belarus met in Moscow yesterday. There have been several similar meetings in recent years, but they did not bring about any concrete results. Yesterday, however, Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov announced that the draft Constitutional Act would be presented to the High Council of the Union for examination on November 15. The council is made up of the presidents and prime ministers of Russia and Belarus. “Then it will be put up for a referendum,” Gryzlov added.
The sudden activity around the basic law of the Union State, work on which had been coming along at a snail's pace, suggests that the Russian-Belarusian union is still being looked upon in the Kremlin as one option for a new state construct at the end of Russian President Vladimir Putin's second term. (Other options are thought to be the appointment of Putin as “strong prime minister” with a weak president, or his election as leader of the ruling party, which will effectively appoint both the prime minister and the president.) However, the Constitutional Act in its current form does not solve the Kremlin's elections problem. According to the Act, the ruling body of the union state will be the Supreme Council, which both presidents will belong to. However, the system of executive power foreseen in the current draft may not be the final one. Yesterday, State Secretary of the Union State Pavel Borodin said in an interview with Rossiiskaya gazeta that there must be a president and vice president in the union state. “The union state cannot develop without independent and effective authority in the person of a president. Introducing a presidential vertical serves the interests of effective management,” he said in that interview.
Introduction of the institution of the vice president,” Borodin continued, “will guarantee equality and the balance of interests of the member states in the Union State.” He expressed the opinion that “it would be expedient to extend to seven years” the terms of the president and vice president, since “in four years, it is objectively impossible to carry out reforms and realize plans for socio-economic development. A seven-year term would be optimal. It will guarantee stability in the state, strengthen authority and make it possible for steady socio-economic development.”
Independent Russian analysts are skeptical of Borodin's ideas. Andrey Ryabov, a member of the Moscow Carnegie Center's expert council, told Kommersant that the introduction of the post of president of the Union State “would be impossible without changing the Russian and Belarusian Constitutions.” Moreover, he thought, “the attitude of the Russian elite to the president of Belarus has not changed. They were afraid of him as a whole and they still are.” Ryabov also think that, in the West, such a scenario would be perceived “extremely negatively.” “The West is ready to accept the idea of the union, if it if formed voluntarily. But, for that to happen, there has to be a single political will in the elite, and it isn't there in Russia or in Belarus.”
Deputy director of the Center for Political Technology Boris Makarenko suggested that, if the new union becomes “some supra-governmental formation, that will mean that that confederation can have a president, a supreme leader, but Russia will retain its president and its Constitution.” The post of union president in that case, Makarenko opined, will be “marital,” the way the confederation between Serbia and Montenegro is today, where the union president is far less significant than the executive powers in each of the republics individually.
If the Constitutional Act is signed in mid-November, under Russian legislation, a referendum initiated by the head of state can take place on March 12, 2006, the unified regional and municipal election day. The formation of the Union State two years before the next presidential elections will mean fundamentally new political conditions in Russia and give the Kremlin new room for maneuvering to solve its 2008 election problem.
Dmitry Kamyshev, Viktor Khamraev
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 21, 2005
|
