News Digest
Bulgaria keeps Communist power monopoly
SOFIA, Bulgaria -- More than
50,(XX) of Bulgaria’s newly vocal
citizens jeered and whistled in the
square outside when Parliament de
cided Thursday it could not legally
repeal the Communist monopoly on
power for another month.
New party chief Petar Mladcnov,
who has promised reform, tried to
address the crowd later and was shouted
down.
“We will do our best to meet the
demands of the people for democ
racy!” he called out. The crowd re
sponded, “Wc don’t want you!’’
He shouted back: “Wc want to
assure you of our responsibility for
the fate of Bulgaria, that wc all want
democracy! If you do not believe us,
this could lead us to tragedy!”
The crowd’s answer: “Resign!
Resign!’’
About half the crowd in the square
had heeded a call to disperse from
Zheliu Zhelev, an opposition leader,
by the time Mladcnov and other offi
cials emerged from the building.
Mladcnov rose to power when
Todor Zhivkov, who ran a Stalinist
state for 35 years, was forced out
Nov. 10. He has promised dialogue
with independent groups and free
elections by May.
On Wednesday the policy-making
Central Committee voted to rclin
quish the party’s leading role, as par
ties elsewhere in Eastern Europe have
done.
Parliament approved a Commu
nist Party motion Thursday to discuss
removing Article 1 of the constitution,
which guarantees party supremacy,
but members said action could not be
taken immediately.
Stanko Todorov, the speaker, said
the constitution requires that any
motion to change must be voted upon
between one and three months al ter it
is made.
While the members deliberated
inside, the crowd in the square chanted
“We are here!” and “Come out!
Come out!’’ Some formed a human
chain around the building.
More protesters arrived. Deputy
speaker A tanas Dimitrov went out
and accepted a resolution from Zhe
lev outlining demands for reform,
abol i lion of the party ’ s lock on power,
talks with the opposition and tree
elections.
It was the same manifesto approval
Sunday at a cheering, snow-swept
rally of 50,000 people in the heart ot
Sofia.
At the three-day meeting that ended
Wednesday, the Central Committee
accepted the essence ol the demands.
Alexander Dimitrov, a parliamen
tary deputy, challenged the decision
to postpone a vote on the party mo
nopoly.
“If we are talking about a demo
cratic society, (people will) ask whai
we arc about if we don t cancel Ar
tide 1,” he said. “If our electorate
outside is to respect us, the I irst step \>
LO cancel rti ueie i.
Dozens of deputies took the floor,
a new experience in a chamber where
hands had been raised automatically
for so many years to approve Zhivkov’s
orders.
Membership changes also are on
Parliament’s agenda, which means
Zhivkov, his son, Vladmir, and Milko
Balev, a close associate, probably
will lose their scats. The party ex
pelled them Wednesday.
Members also arc to consider
removing clauses on anti-state activ
ity from the penal code and passing
new laws on assembly and associa
tion. Original plans were for a two
day session, but it could extend into
the weekend.
After the agenda was adopted
Thursday, speaker Todorov declared
the assembly should end its practice
•
Soviets try to break Communist power gnp
MOSCOW -- Soviet legislators
trying to break the Communist Party’s
grip on power struggled Thursday
over whether to declare themselves a
political opposition, a step toward
formation of an alternate party.
“We cannot take on ourselves
responsibility for what the leadership
is doing now,” said human rights
activist Andrei D. Sakharov, a dep
uty.
“It is leading the country to a
catastrophe, prolonging the process
of pciestroika many years,” he said.
The Inter-Regional Deputies Group,
which consists of about 400 of the
2,250 members of the Congress of
People’s Deputies, has been badly
outvoted this week as it tried to raise
discussion of the party’s constitutional
monopoly on power and a scries of
key economic laws.
Since it was formed in August, the
group, made up of some of the Con
gress’ leading reformers, has been
careful to avoid calling itself an op
ponent of the Communist Party.
But historian Yuri Afanasyev told
the group during an emotional three
hour meeting that it was time to change
its tactics.
“We are against the so-called
leading role of the Communist Party,
that is the monopoly on power of the
ruling party, leading the country to an
unheard-of disaster,” Afanasyev said
in a statement to the deputies’ meet
ing in the Kremlin.
“We arc for a multiparty demo
cratic system,” the statement said.
He said that allowing collective
and state farmers to freely leave their
farms with land, buildings and seed
was the only way to slave off “fam
ine threatening the country.”
Other East bloc countries, pushed
by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev,
have been swept by political reforms
this fall. In Hungary, East Germany,
Czechoslovakia and Poland, the
Communist monopoly ol power has
ended, and Bulgaria’s Communist
Party has proposed a multiparty sys
tem.
In related developments Thurs
day:
• Czechoslovakia’s new govern
ment said negotiations had begun
with Moscow on the withdrawal ol
80,(XX) Soviet troops. About 40,(XX)
people rallied in downtown Prague in
support of opposition leader Vaclav
Havel’s candidacy for president.
• East German reform activists
pressured the government into abol
ishing the Office for National Secu
rity, the hated secret police agency
that tried to suppress their peaceful
revolt.
Several hundred of the Soviet
deputies ignored most of the altcr
noon session of the Congress, de
voted to economic reform plans, to
debate proposals by Afanasyev and
several others.
Many of the deputies who spoke at
the meeting questioned Afanasyev's
terminology of a “political opposi
tion” that calls itself the “radical
democratic bloc.”
They said that could be used
against them by conservatives echo
control the Congress, and could hurl
them in local elections with a popula
tion that many feel is becoming more
conservative because of severe eco
nomic problems.
They formed a commission u>
work out a proposal to bring before a
new gathering today.
“The people don’t want a declara
tion ofacrisis,” said one deputy from
the Don River coal basin of ihe east
ern Ukraine. i
Afanasyev, interviewed alter the
meeting, said it was possible that il
adopted by the group his proposal
could be a step toward formation of
an alternate political party.
Soviet dissident Sakharov dies
WESTWOOD, Mass. - Andrei
Sakharov, the Nobel Peace Prize
winning physicist who became a
symbol of Soviet dissidencc, has
died at age 68, his relatives re
ported Thursday.
Sakharov, a human rights
leader who later was elected to the
Soviet Parliament formed under
President Mikhail Gorbachev and
became one of its leading voices,
died in Moscow, relatives said.
Li/a Semyonov, 34, the daugh
ter-in-law of Sakharov’s wile,
Yelena Bonner, said Bonner called
aboul 6 p.m. Thursday to noli!y ihe
family of Sakharov’s death.
Attempts to reach Sakharov s
home in Moscow by telephone
were unsuccessful.
Sakharov was a lop Soviet
physicist and helped develop its
hydrogen bomb in the 1950s, but
became a dissident leader in ihe
1970s.
Opposition candidate trounces
right wing in Chilean elections
SANTIAGO, Chile - Opposition
candidate Patricio Aylwin trounced
Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s former fi
nance ministerThursday in voting for
a civilian government to end Pino
chet’s 16 years of rightist military
rule.
Election results from about two
thirdsof the country’s 23,(X)2 polling
places showed Aylwin with 2.64
million votes,or 55.5 percent, appar
ently enough for an absolute major
ity.
According to Interior Ministry
returns, Heman Buchi, the former
finance minister credited with de
signing a policy of economic growth
and low inflation from 1985 until
May, was a distant second with 1.39
million votes, or 29 percent,
r--—--—
Motorists honked their horns m
celebration and supporters of thy 71
ycar-old Aylwin, a moderate Chris
tian Democrat, rushed into the streets
of this capital to hail the victory.
A long-shot third candidate, popu
list businessman Francisco Erra/.uri/,
had 726,267 votes or 15.3 percent,
according to the count.Therc were
114,(X)() null and blank ballots, the
Ministry said in its second announce
ment of returns at 9:50 p.m. (7:50
p.m. EST).
Final official returns were not
expected until today.
Buchi campaign manager Pablo
Baraona conceded that Buchi had
lost, but said it was too early to rule
out a possible run-off.
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