Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 26, 1993 TAG: 9304260089
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The New York Times and The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
But even before the results were in, opposing sides in the country's power struggle girded for battle over them.
Preliminary indications were that Russians had turned out in large numbers and had rallied behind Yeltsin, while demanding even more strongly new elections to the Congress of People's Deputies, which has obstructed Yeltsin's economic programs and nearly ousted him last month.
The first official results were not expected until today, and the final tally not before May 5. But a survey of voters leaving the polling stations conducted for the Itogi television news program by the Public Opinion Foundation in 16 cities showed strong support for Yeltsin.
On the first question of the referendum, confidence in the president, it reported 75 percent voting yes and 24 percent voting no. On the second question, 67 percent were in support of his economic program and 32 percent against.
To the third question, which asked whether voters wanted early elections for president, only 29 percent said yes, according to the exit poll. But on the fourth question, whether voters wanted early elections of the Congress, 78 percent said yes, and only 20 percent no.
The results were from urban areas; the final tallies were likely to be less one-sided. But the general pattern seemed to hold in all preliminary tallies reported.
Another exit poll, by the Russian Center for Public Opinion and Market Research, showed Yeltsin getting 59.6 percent of the vote in the Far East and Siberia, and 78 percent in Moscow.
Two hours after the last polls closed in Moscow and European Russia, the national turnout exceeded 60 percent and was rising. That in itself amounted to a triumph for Yeltsin, since his opponents had tried to block the referendum and had predicted a marginal and uneven turnout.
In fact, low or negligible participation was reported in only two regions - Tatarstan, which is demanding more independence of Moscow, and Chechnya, which has declared full independence.
Ruslan Khasbulatov, the chairman of the Congress, and other legislative leaders made it plain Sunday that they would not leave the scene quietly. Before the polls had closed, Khasbulatov was charging fraud in the vote-counting in Russia's Far East.
Khasbulatov called for the presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the standing Parliament, to meet today to study the results.
For his part, Yeltsin has promised that if he prevails in the referendum he will immediately push for a new constitution, which would replace the Soviet-era Congress with a smaller and less powerful legislature.
Khasbulatov said Sunday that no such move would happen.
Since the confidence vote had no legal consequence, and the vote on early elections for the Congress might not be big enough to be binding, there seemed to be no evading another bitter duel between the president and the legislature.
"As soon as the results are announced, there will be a war of interpretations," said Yuri Baturin, a prominent jurist. "At first this will be over results of the voting, and then on broader issues. So a brief period in which the government can work more or less peacefully will be replaced by new efforts to get control over it."
Khasbulatov said before the referendum that he would consider its results as "advisory." Asked for comment as he voted Sunday, he said, "Even if there is a 100 percent vote of confidence in the president, he does not have the right to make constitutional changes unilaterally."
But even if the referendum did not promise an immediate resolution to Russia's political and economic struggles, it marked a critical milestone in the country's transformation.
The very fact that large numbers of Russians were prepared to tackle the complex questions posed in the voting demonstrated that people were not afflicted with the political apathy or indifference that many predicted.
On the contrary, visits to many polling places showed a widespread appreciation of the referendum as an important declaration of responsibility for the nation's fate.
"The vote is not for this or that individual, for Yeltsin or for Khasbulatov," the venerated historian Dmitri S. Likhachev said in a televised interview from St. Petersburg. "It is for Russia's future, to ensure that it does not get thrown back into the repression it has endured."
by CNB