NEWS ANALYSIS : Yeltsin Vetoes Bill in Bid to Boost Coalition

President Boris N. Yeltsin, his popularity at an ebb, has launched a pro-government centrist bloc for the December parliamentary elections and moved Tuesday to change the election law in its favor.

After Yeltsin announced the idea a month ago, 270 Cabinet ministers, regional governors, mayors, bankers, Soviet-era factory directors and others arriving in limousines came together to found “Our Home Is Russia,” led by Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin.

But the movement, which Yeltsin hopes will offer a firmer foundation for free-market reforms and preserve his options for reelection in 1996, has yet to gain a popular following. And it is on the defensive against democratic reformers, socialists and other critics who compare its elitism to the old Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

With his bloc still in formation and voting more than six months away, Yeltsin tried Tuesday to boost its chances by vetoing a bill that would have kept current election rules intact and favored opposition parties he is trying to isolate.

The bill, passed May 11 by the Duma, the lower house of Parliament, would make it easier for candidates running on party slates, rather than individually in local districts, to win seats in the new Parliament. It would also force government officials to step down temporarily before running for Parliament--a rule aimed at the pro-Yeltsin bloc.

Yeltsin, then midway through his five-year term, suffered a defeat in December, 1993, when voters rejected radical democrats who were once the backbone of his presidency and elected a Duma dominated by foes of reform.

Learning a lesson, Yeltsin moved to the nationalist center; he broke with the democrats last December by going to war against the secessionist republic of Chechnya. And he decided to build his own coalition for the next election.

On April 25, the president tapped Chernomyrdin and Duma Speaker Ivan P. Rybkin to form separate electoral movements that would try to shore up the center and isolate extremes--the ultranationalist party of Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the Communists and other socialists who scored stunning successes in the 1993 vote.

Despite Yeltsin’s shift to the center, the anti-Establishment mood of the electorate is still burning. Earlier this month, the Communist Party won a closely watched race to fill a vacant Duma seat in a district near Moscow, with a famous former cosmonaut, Gherman S. Titov.

Chernomyrdin, a Soviet-era technocrat who has never run for public office, admits his movement will be hurt by Russians’ mistrust of their leaders and particularly of Yeltsin, whose ratings have plummeted since the invasion of Chechnya. Chernomyrdin said he will run on his own record of success in slowing inflation and stemming industrial decline since becoming prime minister in December, 1992.

“I am confident we will succeed,” he noted, saying the movement could carry on behind Yeltsin, should he choose to run, in the presidential election of June, 1996.

Even so, a poll by the weekly television program “Itogi” showed that just 4% of the voters surveyed nationwide feel attracted to Chernomyrdin’s movement, which is supposed to seek support in the cities. And formation of the other centrist movement, aimed at the farm vote, has been stalled by opposition from Rybkin’s Agrarian Party.

Viktor I. Borisyuk, a Yeltsin adviser, said it is too early to judge the bloc’s support. Having learned from the mistakes of the overconfident reformers of ‘93, he said, the centrists will campaign hard. But he admitted that 40% of the vote is the most they can hope for.

In any case, candidates of what Moscow newspapers have dubbed “the party of power” can count on the state for every advantage from favorable coverage on national television to subsidized handouts by bankers and factory managers.

The Kremlin’s sway over local politics across Russia through a network of loyal regional, urban and collective farm bosses is a central issue in the struggle over how the new Parliament will be elected.

The bill vetoed by Yeltsin on Tuesday would have kept the system as it was in 1993, when half the Duma’s 450 deputies were elected from nationwide party slates and half from local election districts. The slate system favors well-organized parties such as the Communists and those with charismatic leaders such as Zhirinovsky; they can fill seats with loyal but undistinguished candidates who would stand little chance of winning head-to-head district races.

Yeltsin on Tuesday said he wants 300 deputies of the next Duma elected from local districts and 150 from national slates. He also wants elected officials to be eligible to run for Parliament. Noting that four of every five Duma deputies now come from Moscow, his supporters argue that the proposed change would put lawmakers in closer touch with voters.