Freedom at Issue

Deadlines and Deadlock Push Nepal toward the Brink

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On May 1, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), Nepal’s main opposition party, plans to launch a nationwide protest against the ruling government in support of a new “national government for peace” and a “people’s constitution.” The aim of the protests, which the Maoists assure will be peaceful, is to force current prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal out of office—thereby opening the door for the formation of a Maoist-led government—and ensure that a new constitution is drafted by the May 28 deadline. If Kumar’s ouster is not achieved, the Maoists will initiate an indefinite general strike on May 2 that will shut down businesses, schools, and roads. This impending political unrest is linked to the expiration of the interim constitution on May 28. In April 2008, Nepal’s Constituent Assembly (CA) was elected as an interim body with a two-year term in which to draft a new constitution. As the deadline approaches, however, it has become increasingly probable that the CA will be unable to complete the new constitution, each article of which must be approved by a two-thirds majority. On April 15, Jhala Nath Khanal, the chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal–Unified Marxist-Leninist Party (CPN-UML), which has jointly headed the government along with the Nepali Congress party since 2009, became the first leader to admit this fact, stating that “it is not possible to produce the constitution if we follow the procedures of the CA, in view of differences among the political parties over crucial provisions to be enshrined in the new statute.”

Heated disputes between the Maoists, whose party is the largest in the CA with 38 percent of the seats, and the ruling party coalition have been the norm since Nepal transitioned from a monarchy to a democratic republic in 2008. The political evolution of the Maoists, who transitioned from a rebel faction in Nepal’s 1996-2006 civil war to the country’s ruling party in 2008, has been a tumultuous one.  During their period of rule from August 2008-May 2009, the Maoists continuously behaved as if still engaged in a civil war, using threats of renewed revolution to promote their agenda. Several opponents and observers have accused the Maoists of opposing party pluralism, instead favoring a system with communist facets. Furthermore, the party often seemed to flout its commitment to democratic ideals, interfering in the judiciary by appointing pro-Maoist candidates to posts and dismissing criminal cases against Maoist cadres. Nepal’s other major parties proved unable or unwilling to work productively with the Maoists, partly due to the existence of debilitating internal problems including their exclusive, non-democratic nature, their failure to develop cohesive policy platforms and agendas, and their weak ties to the electorate. Ultimately, the Maoist prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, or Prachanda, resigned after his attempt to dismiss army chief Rookmangud Katawal due to his opposition to the integration of Maoist combatants into the Nepalese Army prompted the president to intervene and two parties to desert the Maoist-led ruling coalition, leaving the coalition with a minority. As the Countries at the Crossroads 2010 report notes, this clash was illustrative of the weakness of Nepal’s institutional checks and balances.  Since their exit from government leadership, the Maoists, led by Prachanda, have remained uncooperative, organizing several protests against a coalition government they accuse of thwarting the peace process. As such, the government has been frequently paralyzed.

Such political antics have undermined the country’s ability to build democratic institutions and address post-conflict challenges, especially within the realm of rule of law. Although formal civilian control over the military was established in 2006, the army has retained some autonomy, and not much progress has been made toward the integration of some 21,000 Maoist cadres into the Nepalese Army. Furthermore, crime and insecurity remain dire concerns, especially in the unstable Terai region. In addition, few efforts have been made to address the crimes committed during the civil war, partly due to the fact that the parties have used this continued lack of accountability to shield their leaders and loyalists. In addition, little progress has been made on the restitution of lands that were seized during the civil war, the majority of which remain in Maoist hands.

Most importantly, partisan wrangling has consistently thwarted the CA process, which is meant to determine crucial institutional issues. Constitutional debate has deteriorated into mud-slinging as the Maoists argue that the ruling coalition is abandoning Nepal’s marginalized sectors in the new constitution; opponent counter that the Maoist aim is to destroy the CA process, keep their own army, and ultimately take over the state.  Major issues on which the two groups have failed to come to agreement include the questions of a presidential or parliamentary system and whether the country’s federal structure should be ethnically- or geographically-based (the Maoists favor the former).  As a result, the process has deadlocked, setting the stage for escalation. Ordinary Nepalese citizens, meanwhile, have become increasingly disillusioned with their government and skeptical of the possibility that a new constitution will ever be agreed on. As former parliamentary speaker Daman Dhungana states, “In the public eye, most of the leaders and their parties are already a discredited lot.”

A peaceful and timely resolution to Nepal’s dangerous predicament is still possible. Some optimistic experts argue that a provision in the interim constitution allows the current government to remain in place, while others claim that the interim constitution will retain its authority until the new constitution is completed. However, another group contests these claims, arguing that the CA cannot amending the interim constitution, and that the failure to deliver a new constitution by May 28 would bring about the end of power for the CA and the government it oversees, plunging the country into a crisis of leadership.  Regardless of legalities, the Maoists have expressed their strong opposition to any extension of the CA and the government unless Kumar resigns.

The failure of Nepal’s parties to cooperate now seriously threatens the survival of Nepal’s nascent democracy. A political vacuum and the eruption of renewed violence are distinct possibilities if the deadline is not met. While Maoist leaders have remained formally committed to completing the constitution before May 28, their confrontational tactics put the sincerity of their dedication to promoting Nepali democracy and peace in doubt. Furthermore, in apparent contradiction to their pledges to oppose the government exclusively through nonviolent means, there have been reports that Maoist cadres have begun to ramp up their combat training in preparation for a major falling out.  In the past few days, several European nations, the United States, and Nepali citizens have urged Nepal’s political parties to work together to avoid the looming crisis by reaching agreement on a draft version of the new constitution. In the face of such pressure, Nepal’s major parties agreed on April 28 to increase their efforts to move past deadlock. The CPN-UML offered to renounce its leadership in the government if the parties are able to satisfactorily address all major issues and the Maoists agree to cancel their strike. In turn, the Maoists agreed to call off the strike if consensus on all major issues is reached by April 30. While the last ditch effort to compromise is encouraging, the parties are left with mere days to resolve differences they have been consistently unable to tackle throughout the CA’s mandate.

Does Bahrain Corruption Case Signal Improved Trajectory?

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On March 22, King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain removed Minister of State Mansour Bin Rajab from his post. The dismissal was handed down four days after Minister Rajab had been arrested and interrogated by the Interior Ministry in connection with his alleged involvement in an international money laundering scheme uncovered by the Anti-Money Laundering Directorate, which has been investigating Rajab for the last year. The next day, Rajab was formally accused of laundering at least US$8 million, although reports indicate a possible total of up to US$31 million. The actions against Rajab are historically significant in terms of both Bahrain’s record of limited anticorruption efforts and the immunity that has traditionally been afforded senior government officials. Rajab became the first government minister to be criminally charged since Bahrain gained independence in 1971 and the highest Bahraini government official to ever be charged with corruption. As such, a first glance the Rajab case serves as a rare example of a concrete government attempt to quash high-level graft, and possibly as an indication of stronger government commitment to its campaign against official corruption. That said, the context of Bahrain’s recent governance trajectory means that any enthusiasm about the significance of a given case must be tempered.

As an important government official who previously served on the country’s Consultative Council (Majils al-Shura) and also as minister of municipalities and agriculture, Rajab’s fall should be viewed as a positive development insofar as past corruption cases have almost exclusively targeted low and mid-level officials. As the 2010 Countries at the Crossroads report explains, despite the fact that the government has in recent years ramped up its efforts to uproot graft within the lower-level bureaucracy, in addition to improving levels of government transparency, high-ranking government officials have continued to abuse their offices for private gain while enjoying de facto immunity. Although the government has pursued cases against the heads of state-owned enterprises, it has generally neglected to prosecute officials in the upper echelons of the administration, many of who either belong or retain close ties to the royal al-Khalifa family.

Nevertheless, the positive implications of the Rajab case may not be so cut and dry. Other senior officials, including members of the royal family who have historically been above the law, may have also been involved in the scheme. If this limits the scope of the case, the importance of Rajab’s removal will be viewed as a tentative, incremental step toward cleaner government rather than a serious blow against corruption. The announcement on March 25 of a ban on media reporting on the case is one warning sign. Unfortunately, Bahrain’s decision to muffle public discussion of the matter is perhaps a more accurate illustration of the country’s recent governance climate than the Rajab case. As the 2010 Crossroads report details, Bahrain has registered a downward trend on several governance issues after showing signs of improvement following the 2006 parliamentary elections. The significant deterioration on freedom of expression forms just one part of a general decline on Accountability and Public Voice issues. Most significantly, the number of cases brought against journalists who cover contentious issues such as corruption scandals and human rights abuses has been on the rise. Bahrain also slipped on civil liberties protections, as attacks against government-critical political activists and citizens increased, freedom of association was restricted, and freedom of religion declined as the tensions between the Sunni government and the Shiite majority heightened. Likewise, a downgrade in the Rule of Law section reflected weak judicial independence and capacity. All of these troubling elements point to the continued existence of a closed regime in which the royal family and other high-level officials concentrate power in their own hands while restricting political space for public commentary and criticism.

Bahrain has a chance to prove that its stated commitment to combating corruption and equality before the law is more than just rhetoric. As mentioned, Bahrain has already begun to address some aspects of its corruption problem, which enabled the country to receive an upgrade on its Anticorruption and Transparency record in this year’s survey. Nevertheless, the persistence of other unfavorable governance practices means that much more than one dismissal and arrest will be needed before any discussion can occur about a definitive trend toward improved democratic governance.

Can Haitian Governance Gains Survive Post-Earthquake Turmoil?

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By Daniel P. Erikson, Inter-American Dialogue

Despite its longstanding reputation as a governance basket case, one of the many tragic elements of the Haitian earthquake is the fact that the country had shown nascent but concrete signs of beginning to address its severe democratic governance deficits. In this post, Countries at the Crossroads Haiti chapter author Dan Erikson of the Inter-American Dialogue notes that it will take tremendous effort by Haitians and the international community to avoid a political power vacuum and governance regression as the official end of President Rene Preval’s term in office approaches.

When Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake on Jan. 12, the immediate international relief effort rightly focused on meeting urgent humanitarian needs, but this should not eclipse the larger need to strengthen Haiti’s political institutions and lay the groundwork for democratic elections. Unless the U.S. and its allies adopt a proactive role, Haiti’s fragmented political landscape threatens to deteriorate into a political vacuum that will compound the current crisis.

Indeed, the earthquake and its aftermath have severely jeopardized the slow but steady climb out of the political and economic abyss that Haiti had witnessed prior to the latest crisis. During an interview in mid-February, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive signaled that the emergence of political divisiveness in Haiti threatens to undermine future progress: “You have the feeling that everyone is trying to do his little part and accuse the other one of not doing his part ... Everyone is trying to create conflict when we have the same enemy right now: it’s misery, it’s disaster.” Bellerive is now sounding the alarm: the earthquake may unleash new political forces that will jeopardize the ability of Haitian leaders to govern.

The current president of Haiti, Rene Préval, is nearing the end of his presidential term and once the Haitian parliament expires, he will be left to rule by decree in a country virtually devoid of institutions. There is no obvious successor to Préval, although Haiti has no shortage of aspirants, judging by the 34 candidates who sought the top job in the 2006 elections. One wildcard lurks in South Africa, where controversial former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is undoubtedly weighing whether he retains enough support in Haiti to launch an effort to return.

In 2010, the Haitian government will need to work actively with key partners to prevent the emergence of a political vacuum that would hamper the international community’s ability to address the country’s brutal poverty and gaping inequality. The Obama administration could make a positive contribution to democratic governance and the rule of law in Haiti by using its leverage, both in Haiti and with the broader international community, in order to facilitate timely elections and reinvigorating efforts to create a solid development path for the country. If the Haitian earthquake is followed by a political unraveling, then the efforts to promote democratic governance in Haiti will be dealt another tragic setback.

Kenya's Simmering Governance Crisis Threatens to Boil Over

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By Thomas Lansner, Columbia School of International and Public Affairs

Professor Thomas Lansner, author of the Kenya report in Countries at the Crossroads 2010, observes that Kenya is currently confronting an outright crisis of governance. He argues that the country's political elite needs to end zero-sum politics in order to resolve the situation before it boils over into a nation-threatening catastrophe.

Kenya’s crisis of governance today threatens not only its peoples’ security and livelihoods, but potentially its continued existence as a state. Like other countries artificially and often arbitrarily created by external powers, its citizens share a constructed identity. Loyalty to such an identity is neither intrinsic nor unbreakable. It must be earned by the legitimacy of ruling institutions. And a notional national identity is even more tenuous if a country’s resources are perceived to be captured and distributed in ways that effectively exclude large portions of the population on the basis of race, religion, language, or ethnicity.

Since achieving independence from Britain in 1963, Kenya’s leaders have intensified ethno-linguistic rivalries over control of scarce resources, particularly land. As I reported in Freedom House’s 2010 Countries at the Crossroads, “The country’s ethnic divisions have been reinforced by successive generations of politicians who have used patronage to build personal and party loyalties based on ethno-regionalism.”

The effects of ethnic and clan-based patronage politics include endemic corruption and pervasive impunity that undermine the legitimacy of governmental institutions by weakening their efficacy and flouting their fairness. In Kenya today, checks and balances that in democratic systems are meant to control the more venal and brutal tendencies of the powerful are almost entirely absent. The judiciary is mostly emasculated. Governmental watchdogs remain toothless even if they raise alarm. The executive is virtually unaccountable for high crimes as well as misdemeanors.

Some hope for positive change in Kenya rises from an often vibrant — if still imperiled — mass media, and a growing network of civil society organizations that transcend ethnic lines and are building citizen pressure for better governance.  But these voices remain mostly ineffective at convincing powerholders to concede to their demands.

Is Kenya is en route to becoming a “failed state”? Lack of resources and capacities inhibit development even in countries with the best-intentioned administrations. If a country that does not or cannot provide security and justice and opportunities for its peoples is defined as failing, then Kenya would join a bevy of other nations, not all of them in the “developing” world, that should be so labeled. Honest efforts by accountable leaders can win citizen trust on which progress, even if gradual, and “nationhood” is built. Yet political infighting in Nairobi is so severe that the coalition cabinet has not even met since early February.

Kenya’s potentially catastrophic failure would be far broader than public dismay at poor performance: it would be active rejection by its citizens of the possibility that the state as constituted will ever serve all its peoples with a reasonable degree of fairness and competency. Absent this faith, other loyalties might prevail, and formally fracture the country among ethno-linguistic groupings that functioned as the precolonial loci of power.

This remains a worst-case scenario, but it is imaginable if Kenya’s leadership across political parties and ethnicities continue to place personal and group privilege ahead of justice. Deeply flawed December 2007 elections, contested largely along ethnic lines, evoked bloody confrontations—often promoted by various politicians—in which at least 1,100 people were killed. There are credible reports that ethnic militias that then nearly launched a civil war while battling mainly with spears, machetes, and bows and arrows are now stockpiling automatic weapons.

As the Countries at the Crossroads Kenya report urges, international pressure and mediation are desperately needed to help properly empower the country’s democratic institutions, and to ensure acceptable elections in 2012. Maintaining politics as a zero-sum competition for ethnic-based spoils, rather than an arena for national compromise, could drive Kenya to a conflagration it will be lucky as a nation to survive, and one that many of its citizens surely will not. Parliament's approval on April 1 of a draft constitution that will now go to a national referendum is an encouraging sign. But Kenya's recent history gives scant hope that the country's leaders will honor its highest laws, or their own most solemn promises.

The Corrupt Rot Inside: Moving Beyond Legalities

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By Bridget Welsh, Singapore Management University

The endemic challenge of corruption continues to be a major obstacle to deeper governance reforms in Southeast Asia. Bridget Welsh, a professor at Singapore Management University and an expert advisor to the Countries at the Crossroads project, explores the main challenges in three critical countries: Indonesia, East Timor, and Malaysia.

The 2010 edition of Freedom House’s Crossroads analysis covered three important countries in maritime Southeast Asia – Indonesia, East Timor, and Malaysia. All three countries experienced modest gains in public accountability and civil liberties during the period of review, but the reports collectively point to the endemic problem facing democracy in Asia – corruption. Despite the efforts of leaders to improve the legal frameworks that guide anticorruption efforts – through the creation of the Whistle Blower Law in Indonesia, Anti-Corruption Agency in Malaysia, and Anti-Corruption Commission in East Timor, progress in addressing the abuse and theft of public funds is minimal and severely undercuts the quality of democracy.

The reasons for the limited headway differ. In Indonesia, the measures introduced by President Yudhoyono only touch the surface of a deep-rooted problem. Corruption is interwoven in the fabric of political life since the Suharto era, and arguably expanded with political decentralization in 1999 after the democratic transition. There is an urgent need to engage in civil service reform, and to transform the patronage networks that characterize Indonesia’s party politics from contract allocators to more accountable representation. Without substantive changes to the institutions that shape policy and deliver services, the new laws will not be implemented effectively and transform the routine practice of corruption.

In Timor, claims of corruption and nepotism at the higher levels of government have increased, as issues of contract allocations to family members and appointments of personal advisors have raised questions about the abuse of power for personal gain. To date the Timor government has failed to adequately investigate or prosecute these claims, allowing a climate of impunity that generally extends over rule of law matters to extend to corruption.  Timorese leaders started to put in place legal bodies to oversee corruption, but these are not operational, and even more troubling, lack the staff to operate effectively. The polarization of party politics over graft charges further undercuts the building of institutional capacity to check corruption, which is now tainting leaders across the political divide in Timor.

The political use of corruption to attack political leaders has been a well-honed practice in Malaysia, since the practice of “money politics” is so widespread among political elites. While the country’s former PM Abdullah Badawi put in place a stronger body to address corruption before he stepped down in 2009, the agency lacks enforcement powers. It has also been perceived to be in engaging in selective targeting, focusing on opposition members and those not connected to the political center. Corruption remains unchecked, as the predatory activity has extended to parts of the civil service and the selection of political candidates by the governing coalition with known corruption records.

The Southeast Asian experience shows that new laws are only the first step to address corruption. Horizontal accountability can only be strengthened if the new anticorruption bodies are given enforcement powers and staffed with qualified professionals who are not tied to the political elites that misuse these bodies for the political gain of incumbents in office. Measures to root out the rot of corruption have to go beyond legal frameworks or the scourge of graft will continue to sharply limit the quality of government in the region.

Countries at the Crossroads 2010 Released

The complete findings of Countries at the Crossroads 2010 were released today, and 2010 materials are now available at the Crossroads homepage.  The site features an overview essay detailing the survey's findings, reports for this year's set of 32 countries, and a charts and graphs packet containing comparative score data.