Word: drafts
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...elections last September before crushing a hard-line revolt in a bloody showdown with the former parliament, he is reaping precisely what he sowed. Having chosen to stand above the electoral frenzy and endorse no party, Yeltsin threw his energies into only one contest -- the referendum on a new draft constitution. Yeltsin's popular clout brought in a 58% vote of support for the constitution, which grants him sweeping powers, among them the right to disband the parliament. But the legislative races failed to produce a new guard of professionals who would put constitutional rule and economic reform back...
Hard-liners have accused Yeltsin of using the new constitution to make himself into a modern-day czar. While the draft enshrines the broad provisions of the U.S. Bill of Rights and many declarative guarantees from the communist era, like the right to housing and medical care, it leaves key questions about the organization of the legislative branch to the discretion of the new parliament...
...draft document, in the making for more than three years, offers Russians an impressive list of human rights. It upholds the principle of private property, including land ownership, as well as freedom of speech and religion. The document also outlaws home searches without a court order, protects the privacy of mail and telephone communications and explicitly forbids the use of torture. But words on paper do not make a law-governed state. Russians remember grandiloquent provisions on human rights contained in constitutions written for Stalin in 1936 and Leonid Brezhnev in 1977 -- rights they never enjoyed. Without stable government institutions...
After the October showdown, the Kremlin tinkered with the draft to tighten central control over Russia's 89 regions and autonomous republics. Federal laws are given precedence over local legislative acts, and natural resources are subject to joint federal and local control. Anticipating trouble in the hinterlands, which have exploited tensions in Moscow to go their own way, last week Kremlin advisers bluntly told local leaders in the ethnic republics of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Tuva and Kalmykia to refrain from "irresponsible remarks," hinting that the Kremlin might take measures to bring them into line...
Even the rules for the constitutional referendum are tricky: the draft must be approved by a majority of at least half of all registered voters. Fearing that the lackluster parliamentary campaign meant the constitution might be lost because of a low turnout, the President went on television to address the nation. The draft document was the best way to protect Russia "from shocks like October 1993," said Yeltsin. "If we want good for our country, for each other, for our children, we must vote for the constitution...