Russia's great drama rolls on as Boris Yeltsin returns

The Jakarta Post's Asia Correspondent Harvey Stockwin focuses on the most exceptional aspect of Russia's recent presidential election -- the fact that Yeltsin conjured up victory out of what was a seemingly lost cause.

HONG KONG (JP): First and last, the reelection of Boris Yeltsin to a second term as President of Russia was one of the most remarkable resurrections to take place in global politics.

Maybe all those bear hugs between Yeltsin and U.S. President Bill Clinton amounted to an exchange of skill as well as of public affection. For Yeltsin is now the greatest of the Comeback Kids. "He took my title away from me," Clinton admitted on July 5.

As he twice disappeared for long periods in 1995, Yeltsin's standing in Russian politics, and in the world at large, plummeted. When it finally emerged that he had had two heart attacks during those absences, his ratings declined still further.

So when this correspondent predicted, in a New Year radio interview, that Yeltsin would win the 1996 Russian presidential election, my tongue was very firmly in my cheek. Yeltsin was then so deep in the political doldrums it seemed an outlandish forecast.

There were two basic reasons for making it. First, Yeltsin has a history of making impossible comebacks, as he did when he was first purged from the old Soviet politburo by Mikhail Gorbachev, -- and then presided through the demolition of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself.

Second, there were no really plausible characters in sight capable of putting themselves across as the leader of all Russia. No single Russian personality seemed capable of exploiting the political vacuum which Yeltsin seemed to be creating.

You have to be larger than life to put yourself across in an election spread over eight million square miles and 11 time zones. Only Yeltsin seemed to have that capacity when I made that prediction. All he had to do was to bestir himself.

So it turned out. Mikhail Gorbachev may be a great historic figure in the West on the think-tank circuit, but that is not how Russians remember him, if indeed they do. Vladimir Zhironovsky had projected himself across Russia's land mass, but as a joke. Grigory Yavlinsky makes good reformist sense when he is interviewed on American TV, but he lacks gravity as well as ability to wheel and deal in Kremlin politics. The other leading reformers just come across as well-meaning intellectuals with little ability to make their ideas acceptable to the wider electorate.

Since the Russian political scene was bereft of real alternatives, to whom he could hand over the noncommunist or reformist mantle, Yeltsin had no choice but to run again.

Russian public opinion polls have been derided for their inaccuracy. In fact, they have done rather well with their predictions during this election period. Yeltsin was down to 8 percent approval rating in January, and when he tossed his hat into the presidential ring in February that rating was still only 12 percent.

These ratings indicated the political obstacle that confronted Yeltsin's reelection campaign -- he had to run against his own record, or at least try and make people forget the tremendous hardships which had accompanied reform amid the effective demolition of the welfare state.

In the ensuing months Boris Yeltsin showed that he is really the only Russian politician who knows how to democratically campaign for high office. He started off with some high profile diplomacy, as all the European and North American heads of government came to Moscow, followed by Yeltsin going to Beijing.

Then his campaign aides found out what domestic issues were most worrying the electorate, and Yeltsin set about giving the voters what they wanted. To be sure, he has vastly increased the budget deficit as a consequence -- but at least a lot of workers are now getting their backlog of unpaid wages.

Undoubtedly Yeltsin spent far more than the strict electoral rules allow. He made the most of the advantage of incumbency. The media, either under pressure or through conviction, was heavily biased in his favor. But at the end of the day he ran a competent campaign -- so professionally that one could not help wondering if a few American "political consultants" were hovering in the background.

The image that lingers for me -- and probably for millions of Russians -- is of Yeltsin energetically dancing across a stage, doing a cross between rock'n'roll and a rumba with all the panache of an old pro. His gyrations indicated a well nigh perfect sense of rhythm and timing. His campaign demonstrated the same qualities.

Political rhythm and timing were also to the fore as he surmounted his first hurdle, coming in first with 35 percent, leading Russian communist party leader Gennady Zuganov by 3 percent. Yeltsin quickly co-opted the services of Alexander Lebed, whose charisma and no-nonsense military background had secured him third place, well ahead of the rest of field, with 14.5 percent.

But that in turn set off a Great Kremlin Drama. First Lebed used his powers as Yeltsin's security chief to sack the unpopular defense minister Pavel Grachev, which led to what Lebed claimed was a near coup attempt by some of the top brass in the military. More important, the ensuing Kremlin in-fighting revealed that Yeltsin's earlier catastrophically low ratings had led his inner cabal of advisers to turn their back on democracy altogether, and urge an authoritarian abandonment of elections.

We may never know what was really going on behind the Kremlin walls, but the ruthless sacking of those top Yeltsin advisers turned out to be good electoral politics.

Then, just as it seemed that Yeltsin had the game sewn up, he disappeared from view again, reviving the anxieties about his health, or his drinking habits, that had sent his ratings down nearly to zero in the first place. Mikhail Gorbachev snidely, but not inaccurately, reminded Russians that the uncertainties concerning Yeltsin were a rerun of the Brezhnev years -- but most Russians were not listening.

Zuganov should have been able to arouse and manipulate the Yeltsin doubts to his advantage but he was unable to do so. Too late the communist leader tried to put across his energy at volleyball and his skill at dancing. He simply could not surmount his image of being a candidate more at home in those elections when communists could always be sure of winning 99 percent.

Forty percent of the voters did want to return to that old order. A slim majority of 54 percent of Russians simply did not want those days back again. Nearly 5 percent voted against both candidates. It was not a Yeltsin landslide -- except in Moscow, where he won by an astonishing 77 percent to Zuganov's 17 percent.

But it was a colossal comeback.