Soviets OK a Super-Presidency : Gorbachev Bulldozes Bill Through

A determined Mikhail S. Gorbachev today pushed through the legislature his proposal for a Western-style super-presidency despite vigorous objections that the new post would concentrate too much power in one man’s hands.

Amid shouts of protest from lawmakers who warned of the dangers of dictatorship, Gorbachev called the vote for his proposal “a great political event in the history of our state.”

The vote in the Supreme Soviet was 347 to 24, with 43 abstentions, in favor of the bill that approves creation of the presidency in principle. The bill now goes to committees that will consider numerous amendments proposed during a day of heated debate.

Then, the Congress of People’s Deputies, the Supreme Soviet’s parent body, will meet March 12-13 to elect a president.

The bill would give the president sweeping powers to declare war, veto legislation, impose a state of emergency and call referendums on legislative decisions he doesn’t approve of.

During the debate today, liberals said the creation of a presidency is premature, and they accused the leadership of trying to rush the issue through.

But Gorbachev angrily rejected critics, saying they had engaged in “cheap demagoguery.” Legislators shouted in protest from the floor.

“Everything I believe necessary to say I’ll say,” the 58-year-old Kremlin chief shouted back.

One legislator, a taxi driver from the Ukraine who last year compared Gorbachev to Napoleon on national television, said he saw a bad omen in the voting.

“The way the voting went from the floor today is the same way presidential power will be,” shouted Leonid Sukhov in an obvious reference to Gorbachev’s pressure.

Pro-democracy demonstrators in several Soviet cities over the weekend said the president would become a dictator, and one sign at a Leningrad rally warned that the new post could lead to fascism.

The Supreme Soviet refused on Feb. 14 to be stampeded into setting a timetable for approving a presidency modeled after the American and French systems.

Gorbachev has said a strong president is needed as part of his blueprint for transferring power from the Communist Party to the government. It is a radical departure from Soviet political practice stretching to the days of Josef Stalin, when the party leader was supreme ruler.

Before the vote, liberals led by Sergei Stankevich, a student of American politics and spokesman for the Inter-Regional Deputies Group, and Anatoly Sobchak, a Leningrad legislator, said the presidency as proposed would be subject to abuse.

“All our decisions can be crossed out by the president,” Sobchak told the 542-member legislature.

He and Stankevich said the proposed presidency would tilt the balance of power toward the chief executive and away from the legislature.

Many Soviets see the need for an iron hand to solve the country’s problems.

“We’re tired from social tension. When are you going to put the country in order?” legislator Rano Ubaidullaeva said her constituents are saying. “We need a person who can have real power . . . the quicker the better.”