The first patient, President Boris Yeltsin is back in hospital andthat is good news for some. Politicians like Gennadii Zouganov come back to life everytime the president leaves the stage. Now they can start their customary mudslinging, blameall the ills of country on Yeltsin and his failing health, call for early presidentialelections and demand changes to the constitution.

A healthy Yeltsin deprives such ideologically bankrupt politiciansof any political platform and so they can rejoice that spotlight shall come back to themwhen they begin again to hurl obscenities at him.

There is bad news for some, though. Prime Minister EvengiiPrimakov has not had much rest in the past six months doubling as prime minister and thepresident of the country. The president's health is of very little consequence tohim.

Nevertheless, the prime minister, having extracted the "Ido" of political compromise from the president, was about to leave on a ten-dayholiday to Sochi when the news of Yelstin's latest illness became known.

Now the newlyweds might have to spend the honeymoon together in acold Moscow rather than in the comfort of being distant from each other.

This latest illness of President Yeltsin, however, does a greatdisservice to the other seriously ill Russian patient, the economy.

The inept economic managers in the government would probablywelcome any event that would shift attention from their inability to do anything with thispatient.

Unlike the president's health, the condition of this patientand its cure is not secret. The much awaited "life saving" drug from theInternational Monetary Fund that this patient needs will only serve, if it eventuallyarrives, as morphine to lessen the pain. The government must find the skill and the willto carry out surgical operations while preserving the vital functions of the system. Theinefficient sectors of economy must either be privatized or simply closed down.

The number of government employees and bureaucrats, in particular,should be cut drastically. Small businesses and new entrepreneurs should be freed of taxburdens for a number of years and given state support through soft loans instead ofpumping that tax money into failing public enterprises.

The populace must be given the right to own land and do with it asit pleases. The collective farm structure should be dismantled and cooperative andindividual farming encouraged. The corrupt and inept banks that have swindled thepopulation for far too long now should be closed down and the finance sector opened tofree and fair competition.

The most painful part of the operation would indeed be thecompletion of the program that former acting prime minister Egor Gaidar and his teamstarted in early nineties.

Political compromises were made which in turn compromised economicreform itself. That, more than anything else, has caused more pain in the long term. Hadthe reform been introduced surgically, the pain would have been over by now, the woundshealed and the economy back in full swing.

The decision to make an amputation is an action many doctors havehad to take in similar circumstances. Lose the patient or preserve life at the cost of ahandicap.

While Yeltsin received the best American medical advice, thatreplaced his heart and continues to receive the best medical treatment, the government isunwilling to take the advice of sensible economists, Russian as well as Western.

The economy is simply being prepped to remain on life support --in a coma -- for a very long period of time.

Frequent injections of cash from international monetaryorganizations, protection of domestic industry and then taxing it for cash, squeezing thecash out of private businesses, imposition of duties on exports, increasing sale of rawmaterials are all standard medicines used by quacks to keep the patient alive for a verylong time. These treatments might stir some shortlived signs of recovery in the economy.

Russia has seen such patients before. None of them achievedimmortality and none of then went back to tennis after bouts of "influenza" or"ulcers."

The health of the country's economy is beginning to look moreand more like the president's. The infrequent signs of life, such as fractionalgrowth in domestic industrial output, can not and will not last for long.

The cosmetic changes introduced so far can not cure the decaywithin. The only difference is that when the end comes, the economy, unlike formerleaders, can not be embalmed.