Yeltsin Welcomes A Familiar Face
Almost as abruptly as he replaced him four months ago, Russian President Boris Yeltsin reinstated Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin Sunday, after firing the entire Russian government. CBS News Correspondent Richard Threlkeld reports.
The Russian president had sacked Chernomyrdin in March, appointing the 35-year-old Sergei Kiriyenko in March, saying Russia needed new ideas and fresh leadership. Kiriyenko had barely been approved by parliament when Russia's economy went into a tailspin, a victim of plunging world oil prices and the Asian economic crisis.
In a televised address Monday, the Russian president even suggested Chernomyrdin might be the best candidate to succeed him when his presidential term expires in 2000.
"He has not been spoiled either by power or by his sacking. I believe these qualities will be a decisive argument in the presidential elections," Yeltsin said of Chernomyrdin in a television address to the nation.
Yeltsin said Monday he brought back Chernomyrdin because an experienced leader was needed to restore Russia's political and economic stability.
The reappointment came one week after the Russian government effectively devalued its national currency, the ruble, and announced it would restructure the country's short-term debts.
The ruble dropped 0.135 against the dollar on the interbank currency exchange Monday, to close sharply down at 7.14 rubles to the dollar.
"Come to work, come to battle," Yeltsin said to Chernomyrdin at the start of their meeting at the Kremlin Monday.
But despite a plea by Chernomyrdin for members of the outgoing government to remain in place for the time being, prominent liberal Boris Nemtsov announced he had quit.
"It is all too difficult to carry out any reforms...in the conditions of such an ugly market, where competition is non-existent, monopolies are rampant, where rules are few," he told reporters.
Chernomyrdin, a Soviet-style bureaucrat who once headed the national gas monopoly, Gazprom, has busied himself since being fired by laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign in 2000.
Few political analysts think Chernomyrdin - a relatively bland and conservative figure strongly associated with an unpopular administration - could win, although he could probably count on some support from the business and banking establishment.
It was not clear if Yeltsin meant Chernomyrdin to run or to prepare someone else's campaign. Most observers said Yeltsin meant to banish Chernomyrdin to the political wilderness.
Chernomyrdin took matters into his own hands by announcing he would run for the presidency in 2000, a move which appeared to catch the Kremlin off guard.
The president cannot formally leave a heir to the throne. He can only try to groom someone who would seek election on a ticket of continuing Yeltsin's reform policies.
Yeltsin, 67, has publicly said he will not run in 200. But he has contradicted himself on the issue several times and some politicians say it cannot be ruled out that Yeltsin might yet seek a third term as president.
The lower house of parliament, the State Duma, called Friday for Yeltsin's resignation, and all factions in parliament had also demanded that Kiriyenko step down or be fired.
Changing prime ministers may be the last best hope President Yeltsin has of fixing things, but there's a cliche that has some merit here: at the moment, there is the sense that Yeltsin is only changing deck chairs on the Titanic.