Hot on the heels of the recent stormy debates in parliament over no-confidence in the government, President Boris Yeltsin's health, the Black Tuesday crisis and the leadership of the "power" ministries, deputies have finally turned their attention to another issue that has been lurking in the shadows: creating an election law. The deputies' interest in this question has increased proportionally as X-day -- Dec. 12 -- has drawn nearer.


Dec. 12 is the day after which, according to the constitution, the president has the authority to disband the Duma. Under these circumstances, the logic of their approach to the matter is perfectly obvious. They want to face the possibility of early elections with as many weapons in hand as possible in order to avoid a repeat of last year when Yeltsin virtually single-handedly determined how the Federation Council was elected.


The president also understands the situation perfectly and has tried to seize the initiative. Several weeks ago he sent up a trial balloon in the form of a draft law proposed by the pro-Yeltsin Central Election Committee. The deputy chairman of the Duma's Legislative Committee, Sergei Zenkin, noted that the procedure that would be created by this draft is without analogue in the entire world.


The draft proposed that the Duma's 450 seats by distributed in a two-stage process. The first phase would consist of direct voting in single-mandate districts, with winners being declared if they garnered at least 30 percent of the vote. If no one received that amount, the seat would go to the party or bloc that received the most votes, providing it also got at least 30 percent. If a party is declared a winner, the seat goes to a person from that party's lists, regardless of how many votes the party received nationwide. Finally, if there is still no winner by this point, the seat passes to the federal level and is distributed according to a proportional system reflecting the voting across the entire nation.


Even a quick glance at this plan is enough to convince one that it is very much in the interests of Russia's major, national parties. It is most likely that in the majority of districts, given the current fragmentation of Russia's political scene, no one will be able to break the 30 percent barrier. To translate this into a language anyone can understand, if this system had been in effect last December, Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party would have won an absolute and unqualified victory.


Apparently realizing that this project plays right into the hands of Yeltsin's opponents, Kremlin strategists made a 180 degree about face, presenting an official, presidential proposal to the Duma on Nov. 23. In this version, the advantage is shifted to individual candidates: 300 seats will be chosen by direct election and only 150 by the party-list system.


The Kremlin apparently is counting on the fact that the influence of the current Duma factions in the provinces is not very great and that local voters are generally suspicious of politicians "from the capital." As a result, locally elected representatives are likely to be less politically savvy than the current deputies, and the new Duma will be less well organized and more easily controlled by executive-branch organs.


In order to get the current Duma factions interested in this project, Yeltsin threw them a bone in the form of an exemption that would free all factions represented in the current Duma from the obligation of collecting signatures on behalf of their candidates. However, a crucial distinction between this project and last December's regulations is that the new proposal would forbid candidates from running simultaneously in single-mandate districts and on the party lists.


Seemingly to spite the president, the Duma faction Yabloko presented its own project, which was prepared by the well-known jurist Viktor Sheinis. However, in an effort to speed the process of passing a law, the Duma's Legislation Committee -- headed by the Agrarian Vladimir Isakov -- decided to put just Yeltsin's project on the Duma's agenda after adopting a few modifications from Yabloko's draft.


Although Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of Yabloko, tried to have the Duma consider Yabloko's proposal anyway, it was clear that the deputies -- especially those from the left-wing factions -- were not interested in dragging out this process. They fairly quickly passed the first reading of this modified draft.


The compromise variant would increase the number party-list seats to 225, which was hardly unexpected considering that half of the current deputies were elected by this system and they certainly have no desire to find themselves trying to run a local campaign in the next election. This version would also allow deputies to run simultaneously in both systems, a move which had the support of the leaders of virtually every faction in the Duma, who claimed that it was the only way to ensure that the new Duma would have the necessary number of "party professionals."


Although it will still be quite a while before a final version of this legislation becomes law, it is already evident that a complex battle is taking shape. It will not be possible to persuade Yeltsin to adopt these changes, since he is convinced that they will prevent him from achieving his main goal -- electing a more predictable Duma, with a more stable balance of forces, than the one Russia currently has.


This goal is even more important given the uncertainties of how the next presidential and parliamentary elections will be held. If they are held simultaneously in the summer of 1996, and if Yeltsin decides to run, he will need the support of a political organization. If the parliament is elected separately next December, then Yeltsin faces the prospect of working with the new Duma during the crucial six months before his own re-election bid.


Sergei Tsekhmistrenko is a reporter for Kommersant-Daily. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.