Democracy, Donors, and Local Elections

A commentary from a decade ago protested that the West ignores the authoritarian reality in Kyrgyzstan.

by L.M. Handrahan 15 February 2010

As we report today, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev has continued to change the country’s constitution to consolidate his grip on power. The move is especially troubling, coming as it does in what has famously been called Central Asia’s island of democracy. It also comes at a time when Western governments are especially reluctant to call the country on its increasingly repressive climate given its strategic value as a shipping hub for supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan.

 

This article originally appeared on 20 January 2000.

 

OSH | Until I began doctoral research, I assumed I was alone in the conviction that neither Kyrgyzstan nor Askar Akaev, its president, embody democracy. The agencies with which I had previously worked, such as the United Nations Development Program, constantly lauded Akaev and his so-called democracy. Thus, I was surprised to find a stream of critical viewpoints, from John Anderson's 1999 Kyrgyzstan: Central Asia's Island of Democracy? to Eugene Huskey's work. In fact, everyone except Western donors seem to be aware that Kyrgyzstan is not, never has been, and doubtfully ever will be a democracy. The anarchy of the country's first local elections are merely symptomatic of the whole.

The elections for local legislative assemblies I witnessed on 17 October in Kyrgyzstan were a farce. Not only did some individuals vote more than once, in some cases ethnic Russians and Tajiks were forbidden to vote at all. People were sometimes persuaded to vote for a particular candidate and were often told whom to vote for when handed their ballot. Organized chaos provided cover for influencing voters. The only thing "free" about the polling stations I visited was the free-for-all nature.

By far the worst station I monitored was at the state university in Jalabad oblast, southern Kyrgyzstan. Many students informed me that they were told by their teachers, during class time, to vote for their rector, who was a candidate. On election day, teachers stood by the voter registration desk to check off student names as ballots were picked up. University officials told one student, who was serving as a local election monitor, to keep silent when she pointed out election violations. I myself was threatened, with a raised fist and a loud voice, by the rector's political observer during the counting process when I continued to observe the violations.

Unfortunately, none of what I witnessed as a monitor for the Washington, D.C.-based National Democratic Institute matters because of two significant factors. First, all leaders of local governments are appointed directly by President Akaev. Those leaders maintain control over everything in their oblast, including these newly elected local legislators. Second, NDI's international election monitors will not issue any report on their findings, which makes one wonder why NDI bothered to organize election monitors in the first place. The lack of such a report by the only international NGO that organized volunteer monitors for the October election, enables the donor community in Washington to continue pretending that all is well with democracy in Kyrgyzstan and thus go on spending taxpayers' money without critical assessment of what these funds are supporting.

International donors appear to have decided that President Akaev is a democrat and Kyrgyzstan is a democracy. From 1991 to 1997, the country received nearly $1.2 billion dollars, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

But there has been no evaluation of where that money has actually gone. Such things apparently do not matter, because Western donors have not made them matter. The aid money goes to Kyrgyzstan all the same, no matter in whose pocket it may end up. Unlike the situation with Russia or Bosnia, no one has written warning op-eds in The Washington Post or The New York Times. No one has publicly alerted the International Monetary Fund that more money to Kyrgyzstan will hurt, not help. Prominent ambassadors have not resigned in protest, as David H. Swartz, the first U.S. Ambassador to Belarus, did in 1994.

If government officials have nothing to hide and benefactors really are concerned where their money is going, all international donors should open their financial records since 1991 to an international team of investigators and accountants and publish the result of their findings. All public officials in Kyrgyzstan should volunteer to disclose their financial statements in local newspapers. Aid funds are public funds that should be accounted for by both donor and recipient in a transparent manner.

If foreign aid has been a success, why then have standards of living in Kyrgyzstan dropped since 1991, as evidenced by the UNDP's Human Development Report? With nearly $1.2 billion in aid, why have the education, health care, employment, public heating, and transportation systems not been improved? With all the aid money spent on assisting democracy, why have the print and broadcast media not changed for the better? Why is the old Soviet legal system still in place? And why were the first “democratic” local elections in Kyrgyzstan's history such a disgrace?