While most democracies in the world work towards creating accountable and transparent anti-corruption mechanisms, authoritarian leaders have managed to use these calls for action as tools to consolidate power and manage the perceptions of their regimes, both domestically and internationally. In fact, several authoritarian regimes have used overarching anti-corruption authorities and high-profile arrests of current and former officials and activists to further their political agendas under the pretext of answering public demand to fight corruption. Such practices, however, have done little to mask these countries’ egregious human rights records. In Central Asia’s post-Soviet states, where these practices are especially rampant, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has thrown in new thorns to already embattled anti-corruption efforts, further revealing the broken cracks of these inherently corrupt governments.
In the book The Logic of Political Survival, a group of eminent political scientists laid out the ‘selectorate’ theory, which is based on the assumption that the goal of every political leader, above all else, is to stay in power. To retain their incumbency, they are willing to provide supporters with incentives and goods in return for loyalty and good press. For their voters in the larger public, this means progress in education, healthcare, and national defence; for the elite, incentives are often provided in terms of material gains. The complex structures that pave the way for vote-buying in crucial elections are also intrinsically linked with the power of authoritarian regimes to control top decision-makers and administrators. Doubled with the absolute absence of free press or robust civil society participation, such duplicitous acts are rarely revealed to the public. According to Clay R Fuller, an authoritarianism expert at the American Enterprise Institute, “If bribery and graft are cleaned up in such an anti-corruption campaign, it is merely coincidental in light of the original sin: the monopolization of political power in an authoritarian system. Corruption is woven into the institutional fabric of all authoritarian regimes.”
In Kyrgyzstan, a country ridden with political instability, a highly politicized battle against corruption faces several challenges, especially in terms of governance. After the deposition of the country’s first President Askar Akayev in the Tulip Revolution of 2005, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who replaced the leader, rose to power on the condition that he would fight corruption and improve socioeconomic conditions in the country. The Bakiyev family found itself embroiled in scandals of judicial interference, nepotism, state capture, bribery, offshore financial holdings, and money laundering. Dissatisfaction over Bakiyev’s actions angered the public, who viewed the leader’s anti-corruption attempts as moves to “institutionalise his private ambitions to expand his family’s grip on governance resources”. The anger culminated in a period of political and social unrest, leading to Bakiyev’s resignation and subsequent decision to flee the country in 2010.
The interim government that replaced Bakiyev, led by former Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev, was also mired with corruption, despite introducing a new constitution that increased the scope of parliamentary powers. Under Sooronbay Jeenbekov’s presidency, Atambayev was stripped of his immunity and is currently facing corruption and murder charges for his alleged involvement in the death of a security forces member, while his Prime Minister and other key allies have been sentenced to several years in prison on corruption charges. And while Jeenbekov is emerging as a new hero in the country’s battle against corruption, it is worth noting that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had reported that Jeenbekov himself won the 2017 elections amidst multiple irregularities, including the “misuse of public resources, pressure on voters and vote-buying”.
See also: After Former President’s Conviction, Kyrgyz Court Upholds 18 Year Jail Term for Ex-PM
Jeenbekov’s administration is also under the scanner for stifling the country’s press, charging several journalists with “illegal receipt of commercial secrets”, and “disclosing secret commercial information”. The country’s defamation and fake news laws have been designed in such a way that investigative journalists can be easily prosecuted. For example, in May 2017, Atambayev’s government initiated proceedings in a civil court against investigative journalists for defamation, allegedly in connection to articles that were critical of his actions. The convicted journalists had to cough up $44,000 in “moral damages”. Further, a Transparency International report revealed that the country’s most basic sectors—education, water, public financial management, and the judiciary—were the worst hit due to corrupt practices.
Similarly, in autocratic Tajikistan, where President Emomali Rahmon is set to contest elections for a sixth term, a 2015 law allows for Rahmon to be recognized as the “Leader of the Nation”, awarding him and his family immunity. Rahmon’s son, Rustam Emomali, the mayor of Dushanbe, was also the head of the country’s anti-corruption agency until January. In 2017, the Tajik administration arrested at least 10 top officials working at the anti-corruption agency on charges of corruption and fraud. “It turns out that many officials who should be fighting corruption are in fact corrupt officials themselves,” then-chairman of the parliament's lower chamber, Shukurjon Zuhurov, said. Simultaneously, the Central Asian country’s press freedom rankings are going down every year.
In the same vein, Uzbekistan, the only non-authoritarian government in the neighbourhood, has also amped up its crackdown on officials, including former Prosecutor-General Rashidjon Qodirov, who was sentenced to a ten-year prison term on corruption charges. This year, the conviction of former President Islam Karimov’s daughter, Gulnara Karimova, on charges of racketeering, extortion, and money laundering and embezzlement brought President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s approval ratings up; this surge was further aided by his decision to release several dissidents from prison. Further, after Uzbek citizens began questioning the role of corrupt officials and negligence in the devastating collapse of the Sardoba dam, nine authority figures involved in the project were immediately arrested. Yet, the government is yet to provide a report on the incident, which would set the course for reparations and rehabilitation of victims in the affected region. This indicates that the governing regime is more interested in propping up its public perception under the guise of fighting corruption, rather than truly addressing the root causes of such malaises or tackling the real-world impacts of that corruption.
According to his critics, Mirziyoyev seems to be working towards an authoritarian rule, inspired by the Central Asian neighbourhood and worldwide trends as in Turkey, Russia, Hungary, and Poland. Following the arrest of several journalists and blatant media censorship in 2018, the Human Rights Watch had released a report stating that the Uzbek administration had a “chilling effect” on Uzbekistan’s free speech and is “standing in the way of dismantling the country’s authoritarian system.”
This worrying situation across the region has only been worsened by the ongoing pandemic, during which the path to information has been obstructed by the use of force. For instance, The Kazakh government signed a new law restricting the freedom of assembly, while parliamentarians in Kyrgyzstan have been contemplating a law to weaken civil society bodies. Likewise, in Azerbaijan, severe lockdown measures made it easier for security forces to crack down on dissenters.
Alongside silencing political opposition, these leaders are also engaging in financial corruption and restricting access to crucial money to further consolidate their power. For example, Tajikistan has received around $400 million in aid to combat the virus thus far. Yet, the first $11.3 million pledged to the country by the World Bank towards building intensive care units and financially supporting needy families was only dispatched by July. Moreover, it has been suggested that these payments came from a state budget, not the World Bank’s grant, further obfuscating what the state has used millions of dollars in aid for.
Furthermore, in August, Uzbekistan’s anti-corruption agency said that government employees had embezzled more than $171,000 from the Health Ministry’s sanitary-epidemiological department’s $1 billion crisis fund since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. “We are concerned by the cases of embezzlement of money earmarked for measures to counteract the spread of coronavirus,” said Tanzila Narbayeva, chair of the Senate. At the same time, Kazakhstan arrested its Deputy Health Minister after it was found that $180,000 worth of false reports had been entered into the country’s Damumed digital database. In Turkmenistan, World Health Organization delegates have been desperately trying to secure accurate information about the government’s health system, but the country continues to claim to have extremely few cases of the coronavirus and a soaring number of pneumonia patients and deaths.
As more and more of these reports pour in, alongside using brute force and legislative amendments to silence dissidents, Central Asian regimes are simultaneously doubling down on their penchant for answering calls for political accountability by arresting former officials. While they attempt to distract the public from their own corruption, these governments and leaders further consolidate and centralize power, and expand their control over the media and civil society. While holding previously corrupt officials may be seen as a welcome step, the underlying motives for doing so sets a dangerous precedent for political freedom and puts democracy and accountability even further out of reach. The ongoing coronavirus crisis has revealed that even the deaths of thousands and a global pandemic are unable to deter, or shift the focus of, these leaders away from maintaining and cementing the status quo. Central Asia, it seems, is destined to continue along its path of secrecy and corruption.