Russians go to polls as world waits

By Masriati Shobari

JAKARTA (JP): The campaign for Russia's presidential election is entering its final week with President Boris Yeltsin confident of winning the first round tomorrow, and the second round three weeks from now on July 7.

Though 11 candidates are queuing to enter the Kremlin by the ballot, the two heavyweight contenders of this month's closely- run election remain Boris Yeltsin and Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party.

Yeltsin's other serious rivals include Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of a center-liberal coalition called Yabloko; the ominous, inflammatory Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party; Alexander Lebed, the populist former military commander, whose deep voice is renowned for making soldiers tremble and women's knees wobble; Yury Vlasov, a nationalist and former weight lifting champion; Svyatoslav Fyodorov, a famous eye surgeon, a rival presidential candidate, who has been pressing Yeltsin for political compromise; and the Nobel prize-winning, last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Now, guess who will govern. According to Russia's not-very- reliable opinion polls published last week, Yeltsin stands in the lead with roughly 34.9 percent of the vote. Zyuganov, whose rating has remained fairly steady, is running second behind the president, leveling on 15 percent.

Zyuganov, fearful of alienating Russia's growing middle class, has moved away from Marxist economic orthodoxies and routinely vow that private property will be sacrosanct, once he is elected. Clearly, by playing the nationalist card, the left is hoping to capitalize on the emotional loss Russians have experienced since the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union five years ago.

For Russia, the painful transition to capitalism has been aggravated by the loss of empire, of international standing, and maybe of national identity.

As with Zhirinovsky, opinion polls do not give him much chance of conquering the Kremlin. They show him with about 7 percent of the vote.

And Gorbachev? Styling himself as the father of Russia's democratic movement, Gorbachev is hesitating loudly in the wings, but nobody pays him much attention anymore. He is accused of bringing the Soviet Union to an end. He would have to accept that his greatest political achievement has become his biggest political handicap. His 10-point electoral program to revive Russia overlaps Yavlinsky's policy and this threatens to split democratic vote. Nationwide, his rating is a pathetic 2 percent.

Can Yeltsin win? Outfooted for months by Zyuganov, and out- pointed in the opinion polls, the silver-haired Yeltsin is reviving despite two serious heart attacks and rumors that he is an enfeebled drunk.

He made a number of political zigs and zags, a series of costly election campaigns, sparking fears that he is sacrificing his tight budget policy to win votes.

Yeltsin's bold strategic moves include sacking liberal ministers (and replacing them with hard-line figures), signing a bilateral treaty with the impoverished Belarus, cooperating with Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and having a modest, four-way agreement with Kazakhstan, Khyrgyzstan and Belarus.

All this is not meant to resurrect the Soviet Union, but rather to reflect Russia's geopolitical interests. The cooperation is to boost political support from the Commonwealth of Independent States while simultaneously showing the communists that Yeltsin is not the agent of Western leaders.

The latest move was the announcement of the Chechen cease- fire. Whether this really is the beginning of a compromise, based on humanity and common sense, or simply a cynical preelection ploy, remains to be seen.

The southern regions remain important to secure Russia's strategic goal of controlling the pipeline from the Caspian to the Black Sea via Chechnya.

As the result, the cease-fire agreement, which began last month in the Kremlin and ended on June 10, has provided powerful political ammunition to his political opponents, as most voters demand a total end to the bloody 18-month war.

Most commentators and political analysts remain wary of opinion polls, as they believe the outcome of tomorrow's poll will be conditioned by the whim of the 17.5 percent of undecided and apathetic votes.

There will not be outright victory in the first round of voting because the one-third lead predicted for Yeltsin is not sufficient. The second round is seen as even more vulnerable. Worse, the polling may be misleading.

First of all, the sample sizes are small and weighted towards proreform urban areas. Many pare conducted by telephone, which excludes poorer Russians, and respondents may still be fearful of expressing disapproval of the powers-that-be. Lastly, many of the polls have been manipulated by the government.

Whoever runs Russia after June will have to haul the country through an acrimonious stalemate. While other Eastern European countries enter the promised land of rapid growth, Russia can but spot it in the distance.

Compared to the West, Russian industry is low-quality, consumes more energy and raw materials, and is in need of more labor. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development forecasts 1996 GDP to be 44 percent lower than in 1989. Inflation has been brought down, but too slowly.

Between 1991 and 1995, the Russian price level rose 3,900 times and inflation has been above 100 percent each year. The country also inherited more than a US$40 billion stock of sovereign debt, despite the three-year $10.2 billion loan agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

The loan is disbursed monthly to ensure compliance with tough fiscal and monetary conditions. A crucial problem for Russia is that the former Soviet Union did not negotiate its loans on commercial terms. Many loans came in the form of goods and were expected to be repaid by barter.

The other serious difficulty centers on exchange rates. The loans are denominated in rubles. During the Soviet era, the ruble was artificially set at 0.6 to the dollar. Nowadays, the Russian currency trades at 5,012 to the dollar.

Russians also realize that macroeconomic stabilization, democratic transparency and capacity building are necessary markers along the path of transition. The West is fully aware that so long as the Russian economy remains a mess, Russia will be vulnerable.

The Russian election is internationally important because it will reveal how long the new Russia will take to become a coherent actor on the worlds stage. More importantly, the election will determine what sort of role Russia will play.

Bordering Europe in the west, the lands of Islam in the south and China in the east, Russia is the heartland of Eurasia. In the early 1990s the West had a brief chance to help it become a normal democracy. It could not afford the chance.

The western world is concerned that deteriorating social conditions could lead to slackened security, making the 900 nuclear storage sites and the 15 Chernobyl-style nuclear reactors a virtual invitation to terrorists or rouge nations.

The foreign policy choice that will emerge from this year's election seems likely to be much starker. The possible outcome of the second round could turn out to be a contest between the two front-runners, Yeltsin and Zyuganov.

If Yeltsin wins -- who has supporters in the West that will do almost anything to get him reelected -- economic reform would presumably begin as soon as possible.

A Zyuganov victory would mean the reform road would be longer and the opportunity for Russia to become a normal democracy with a normal market economy would be lost. At best, relations between Russia and the West would become more difficult; at worst, the world would have to cope with a Russia more unstable and perhaps as disruptive as in Soviet days.

The author is a freelance writer based in Jakarta.