They Hold Elections, but Voters Have Little Say

There are many ways to hijack an election, and Central Asia’s wannabe dynasts have learned them all. In recent weeks, Azerbaijan’s Heydar A. Aliyev and Kyrgyzstan’s Askar A. Akayev turned their presidential polls into national charades simply, it would seem, to retain office. By treating elections like war and voters like spoils, both presidents are helping to turn Central Asia into a front line of dictators rather than democrats.

At first glance, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan live in opposite worlds. Azerbaijan sits at the fulcrum of the resource-rich Caspian Sea. Businessmen in Baku, the capital, spend their days negotiating future profits that lie below the region’s oldest oil fields. Thus far, talking has outpaced earnings: Nary a pipeline has been built. But the lure of prosperity has kept Azerbaijan in the diplomatic games that engage the West’s relations with Russia, Iran, Turkey and the eastward stretch of Central Asia’s steppe that begins at the Caspian’s shores.

For the Kyrgyz, such engagement is a distant dream. Perched at the mountainous Chinese border, it is home to a small population and to almost nothing that the rest of the world can buy. It depends on its neighbors for essential resources and tries not to deviate from the dictates of Central Asia’s new autocracies. Anxious not to be ignored, though, its diplomats seek bit parts in the troubled dramas that Islamic militancy and civil strife have delivered to Central Asia.

At its independence in 1991, Kyrgyzstan offered its citizens little but the promises that the rest of the world offered. Akayev traded deftly on his country’s prospects for what the U.S. and its allies called market democracy. Kyrgyzstan became a mirror for Western ambitions, a quick fix on the road from a command economy to capitalism, and perhaps from dictatorship to democracy.

But the mirror was broken by ambition, circumstance, frustration and, increasingly, malign intent. By the time Akayev began his second term at the end of 1995, he had already apportioned more power to the presidency and more blame to parliament. Since then, he has outmaneuvered all his potential opponents and, sadly, potential allies. February’s flawed parliamentary elections were a warm-up for October’s presidential polls, which handed Akayev an unprecedented third term after he removed most other serious challengers from the political contest.

The primary victim in Kyrgyzstan, as in Azerbaijan, is an open society. For Kyrgyzstan, free expression--for individuals and political parties--should provide a way to engage the tiny nation in its own governance as the country seeks a niche in the world economy. This is, and will remain, a difficult job requiring unequivocally independent institutions that represent--not dictate to--Kyrgyz citizens. One man propped atop a shaky electoral system that is increasingly tainted by fraud is inevitably part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Although profit is a surer bet for Azerbaijanis, the same lessons hold true. For a decade, Azerbaijan’s politics have been marked by harassment, intimidation and the state’s propensity to rule with a strong hand. Electoral institutions have been strengthened only to maintain Aliyev’s grip on power and minimize the influence of dissent. Last month’s election in Azerbaijan, like Kyrgyzstan’s, witnessed the kind of technical fraud that comes naturally when a political environment is already corrupted by antidemocratic practices.

Indeed, corruption and its close cousin, uncertainty, link both countries; as with many of their neighbors, political duplicities pave the way for economic vice. Without free expression, contracts cannot be enforced, courts cannot operate fairly and the power of the purse is limited by the interference of illegitimate takers. The economic reforms on Kyrgyzstan’s books are meaningless in practice, not just because its market is small, but also because corruption makes it impossible to bank on the state. Azerbaijan’s potentially large market is compromised by the uncertainty that arises when power insulates itself from society’s needs.

This is the instruction that international organizations and multilateral banks teach, over and over again. But Central Asia’s persistently antidemocratic habits suggest that these lessons have yet to be taken seriously. Across the region, weak economies are nearing collapse as the rule of strongmen becomes entrenched. Many parts of the former Soviet Union are seized by a revolution of diminishing expectations. In both the Caucasus and the center of Asia, armed militancy has grown as a way to express disagreement when other means are unavailable, or have failed.

Nonetheless, and despite their discouraging experiences, Azerbaijani and Kyrgyz citizens continue to go to the polls. While their leaders embrace the ways of banana republics, voters still cast their lots with the constructive uncertainties that democracy might one day offer. Political parties and election monitors alike have risked imprisonment to participate in politics. When circumstances allow--as they have, paradoxically, in the wake of both Kyrgyz elections this year--they have demonstrated publicly against discriminatory government rulings, threatening state practices and, in Azerbaijan, called for new polls in many districts.

These voters also listen to what foreign observers say and have every right to respond with dismay. The actions of intergovernmental organizations are often far milder than the deeds they criticize; too often, they opt for engagement at any price. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the region’s elections and democracy monitor, has issued report after chastising report proposing reforms in election laws and institutions. But when truculent governments, including Kyrgyzstan’s, mock their recommendations, nothing happens. Last month, soon after Azerbaijan’s highly flawed elections, the Council of Europe chose to conditionally renew its membership invitation to Baku.

These gestures are a slap in the face of the voters. Although professional politicians are rarely surprised by stark contrasts between word and deed, it is the rare diplomat who puts his life on the line for the right to express his opinion--the way Kyrgyz and Azerbaijani citizens now do when they go out to vote. Central Asia’s governments are trying to trade on the letter of international laws and standards by ignoring their democratic spirit. Without blunt responses that are clear to every voter whose preference has been sullied, the international community appears to sanction the very behavior that it otherwise says it wants to stop. Elections alone do not make democracy, but they are necessary to validate the political will that makes democracy possible. The leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan have hijacked that will--and in quiet ways, the world has let them do so. This is no way to win the peace.