Yeltsin marks comeback with radical programme

Press, 2 June 1989, Page 6

Yeltsin marks comeback with radical programme

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The Communist Party maverick, Boris Yeltsin, marked his return to the Soviet political arena yesterday with a radical programme calling for regulation of the party’s powers and those of President Mikhail Gorbachev.

His speech to the new Soviet Parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, received little more than polite applause from the conservatively minded majority, although fellow reformers expressed support for his views. Mr Yeltsin himself appeared delighted with the outcome of the day, which he described as the most constructive since

the Congress began its inaugural session a week ago.

“The role of the party is being discussed and the discussion on this is becoming more and more mature and better focused,” he told Reuters during a break in proceedings. “We are discussing relations between the party and the law and the obvious conclusion is that there must be a law on the party.” In his speech, broadcast live on Soviet television, Mr Yeltsin called for an annual plebiscite on the newly elected President, Mikhail Gorbachev, arguing that the new post, added to his position as party leader, gave him

dangerous powers. “There might appear a temptation to resolve our problems with forced methods, so that without noticing it, we might find ourselves again in a new totalitarian regime, a new dictatorship,” he told the Congress.

He also said the President should be elected directly by the people, rather than by the Congress.

Mr Yeltsin, aged 58, was himself elected to the Congress by a landslide vote in Moscow, in a major comeback from his sacking as Moscow party chief and as a junior Politburo member after criticising the slow pace of reform in October,

1987. He told the session the replacement of the rub-ber-stamp Supreme Soviet with the new Congress had failed to achieve a real transfer of political power from the party apparatus.

A fellow reformist deputy and historian, Yuri Afanasyev, said Mr Yeltsin’s speech could be regarded as an alternative to Tuesday’s keynote address by Mr Gorbachev, while an editor, Vitaly Korotich, said “it was a bit Ryzhkov and a bit Jesse Jackson.”

He was referring to Soviet Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, and the black American civilrights campaigner whose

forceful oratory during last year’s Presidential Election campaign won him world attention.

Mr Yeltsin’s speech was the high point of one of the liveliest days of the session, which included calls for a referendum on the disputed Azerbaijani enclave of Nagorno-Kara-bakh and for the closing of the Chernobyl nuclear power station.

A former Olympic champion weightlifter and Moscow deputy, Yuri Vlasov, drew a standing ovation from some sections in the Congress hall for a fiery speech in which he called for greater accountability of the Soviet internal security services.