home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=93TT1667>
- <title>
- May 10, 1993: This Time, Boris Gets a Mandate
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- May 10, 1993 Ascent of a Woman: Hillary Clinton
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK
- WORLD, Page 22
- This Time, Boris Gets a Mandate
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Russians turn out in strength for Yeltsin, reviving his
- hopes for reform
- </p>
- <p>Boris Yeltsin called the results a "sensation," and he was
- right in more ways than one. As the embattled Russian President
- celebrated victory in a nationwide referendum, some 3,000 angry
- procommunists took to the streets of Moscow Saturday in an
- unusually violent protest. They clashed with riot police,
- leaving at least 150 demonstrators and police injured. And while
- preliminary results gave Yeltsin a 58% vote of confidence and
- a surprisingly high 53% approval for his economic reforms,
- political opponents denounced the vote as meaningless; he failed
- to get the absolute majority of all registered voters needed to
- force early elections that could replace the conservative
- parliament.
- </p>
- <p> Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, once Yeltsin's ally,
- dismissed the referendum as a "sociological poll," and
- parliament chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov said it had "brought no
- losers or winners"--just a weakening of the state. Yeltsin,
- however, took his victory as a mandate to begin strengthening
- his political clout. He summoned regional leaders to Moscow to
- present a new draft constitution that would turn Russia into a
- presidential republic with a two-chamber parliament to replace
- the present Congress of People's Deputies.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-