MOSCOW, SEPT 22: A Beleaguered President Boris Yeltsin, confronted with a mounting public campaign for his ouster, now also faces the prospects of his constitutional powers being curtailed.Various factions in the Russian Duma have decided to introduce major amendments in the constitution aimed at depriving the president of unrestrained powers.According to the daily Izvestia, the Duma lawmakers are seeking powers to endorse not only their candidates for prime minister's post, but also to place men of their choice in defence, interior, foreign, and other key ministries. This will make the convening of a new constituent assembly inevitable, the Izvestia says.According to the daily, the most significant component of the package of constitutional amendments is related to the process of impeachment of the president. In order to simplify the legal process to put the president on trial for ``crimes committed during his tenure'', the Duma plans to move an amendment seeking to change the term``bring charges'' against the president into ``initiating proceedings''.The move comes at a time when the Kremlin is already unnerved by the `All-union Protest day' planned on October 7, sponsored by the Communists and their Left allies. According to The Voice of Russia, one of the main aims of the protest day is to seek removal of Yeltsin.The president fears that the public campaign for his exit may evoke support from the army, the Rio Novostsi reports.The president's apprehensions are based on the fact that the servicemen have not received their salaries for the last three months and have not been paid their food allowance, house rent allowance, and leave pay for several years now. Altogether, the state owes them 16 to 19 billion roubles. Despite Kremlin's assurance that the arrears will be cleared this month, the defence analysts point out that the task is an impossible one.No wonder, the armymen are a disenchanted lot. According to the news agency, some units of the armed forceshave already started staging public demonstrations in open defiance of the army discipline. In fact, the wives of air force officers, one step ahead of their husbands, are resorting to blockades on runaways to prevent aeroplanes from taking off in the Leningrad military district.To add to the government's woes, the new prime minister Yevgeny Primakov is faced with the distressing problem of saving Russia from disintegrating into independent republics.In view of the tottering economy, some of the rich regions of Russia have threatened the Centre that they will stop contributing money to the federal budget and, if need be, proclaim their independence from the Russian federation in the same way as Soviet republics broke away from the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1991.It is in this context that the interior minister Sergei Stepashin has warned that Kremlin will not compromise on the territorial integrity of the nation. He was referring to the situation in Caucasus and Siberia, where the secessionist forcesare raising their heads.The clamour for sovereignty among many governors has been described by media columnist Oleg Odnokolenko as a ``dress rehearsal for Russia's disintegration''.
