Beyond Ukraine, a grim picture
Post-Soviet democracy
Rachel Denber
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan On Sunday, Ukraine's voters returned to the polls
to elect their president. Ukrainian society's peaceful rejection of last month's
manipulated vote and its demand for honest elections and government accountability made
the election a dramatic break with the Soviet past.
The opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, appeared to have a clear lead, but the very fact
that the vote took place was a victory for civil society. Across much of the former Soviet
Union, however, the picture for democracy and institutions that protect basic freedoms is
grim.
On Sunday, people in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet state 3,000
kilometers, or 1,875 miles, east of Kiev, elected a new Parliament. Few people were
watching what happened because there wasn't much to see. A victory for the pro-government
party was a foregone conclusion because there were no opposition candidates. The
government has stifled institutions that underpin a free and fair electoral process -
opposition political parties, media freedoms, an open atmosphere for nongovernmental
organizations and freedom of assembly.
This time last year, after reformists in Georgia staged the "Rose Revolution"
that ousted President Eduard Shevardnadze, many wondered what lessons governments in the
region would draw. No leader relishes political instability. But the question was, what
would the region's leaders do to avoid it? Would they promote honest elections, greater
accountability, better governance and peaceful transitions of power? Or would they ignore
the issues that cause public discontent, such as entrenched, widespread corruption, and
undermine the political opposition and democratic institutions in order to retain power at
all costs?
Overwhelmingly, governments in former Soviet states have chosen the
latter path, continuing policies that had started well before the Georgian revolt.
Uzbekistan may be one of the more acute examples of this trend but it has plenty of
company.
Azerbaijan's fraudulent presidential elections last year led to political violence, for
which the government has imprisoned many opposition leaders. Public demonstrations in
Azerbaijan by people seeking to express dissident views are nearly impossible.
In Armenia in spring the government tried to use a variety of arbitrary
measures to prevent massive rallies protesting falsified elections the previous year. The
police used excessive force on demonstrators, raided the headquarters of opposition
parties, arrested a handful of opposition political leaders and rounded up hundreds of
their supporters.
Two months ago the government of Kazakhstan created an unfair playing field for the
parliamentary vote, resulting in only one opposition party member gaining a seat in the
lower house of legislature. A couple of weeks ago not a single opposition candidate was
elected in Belarus's parliamentary vote, after the electoral authorities used a
combination of nonregistration of candidates and polling day fraud to keep the opposition
out.
In Kyrgyzstan, the government has already taken steps to increase its
control over the news media and other civil society institutions before parliamentary
elections in February.
Throughout the region, governments control television and try to intimidate independent
print media through punitive defamation suits and sheer bullying. In many countries, human
rights and other civil society organizations are the targets of politically motivated tax
inspections. Human rights defenders are unlawfully jailed by the authorities and subject
to violent assaults by unknown attackers.
Russia's crackdown on civil society has been under way for the past four years. President
Vladimir Putin's government gradually seized control over what had been a diverse, if not
exactly free, broadcast media and began using it to promote pro-government political
candidates and vilify the opposition. .Putin himself led a broadside attack on democratic
organizations, accusing them in his "state of the nation" speech of serving
foreign masters rather than the interests of ordinary Russians. Now new legislation will
make the funding of nongovernmental organizations subject to government review.
In contrast to their response to compromised elections in other parts
of the region, Western countries leaped to the defense of Ukrainians demanding electoral
integrity in Ukraine. For the most part, they were not cowed by accusations, from Russia
and other countries, that they were meddling. But what would Western leaders have done had
it not been possible for Ukrainians to take to the streets? Would their defense have been
as firm?
Elections in this part of the world are stolen all the time, but governments get away with
it by stifling democratic institutions. Western leaders need to be every bit as supportive
of the other struggling civil societies in the region, before there is nothing left to
support.
(Rachel Denber is the acting executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central
Asia division.)
"International Herald Tribune", December 28, 2004
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