Abso lute power corrupts absolutely: Azerbaijan lifts term limits
Farid Guliyev, Ph.D. candidate – 5/4/2009
`Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ This famous dictum of Baron
Acton sounds so true today in the former Soviet republic of
Azerbaijan. Here the referendum this Wednesday (March 18) lifted term
limits on the presidency granting approval to President Ilham Aliyev
to serve as many times as he wishes after his second term finishes in
2013. The poll approved more than 40 amendments to the constitution
removing some of the restraints on the presidency. Ilham Aliyev, 47,
succeeded his ailing father Heydar Aliyev in the presidential election
in 2003 and voted to continue in office for the second five-year term
in October 2008.
Nowhere in the post-communist area is power so much personalized as in
Azerbaijan. Even in Turkmenistan, notorious for its megalomaniacal
ruler Saparmurat Turkmenbashi, the presidential office was not, after
the death of Turkmenbashi, inherited by a family member but conferred
on an elite insider. In Belarus, where President Lukashenko has been
in power for more than 14 years, there is no comparable nepotism
either. Perhaps, it would be more insightful to draw parallels (and
learn lessons from) with Sub-Saharan Africa where the nascent state
institutions were largely `privatized’ serving the interests of the
post-colonial elites. For example, Pesident Omar Bongo of Gabon has
been in power since 1967.
To the surprise of democracy optimists, the breakup of Communist rule
saw the emergence of authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes.
These regimes have all adopted Western-style institutional and legal
setups but the state was typically exploited for private gain. Keeping
this mind, it makes little sense to continue to frame events in the
region as steps towards or away from democratization or consolidation
of democracy. It is not that the removal of term limits would be a
setback to consolidating an Azerbaijani democracy as the Council of
Europe’s Venice Commission opinioned about the constitutional
amendments in Azerbaijan. Rather, it is a move towards the
consolidation of an authoritarian regime.
The Aliyevs have run the country by employing both carrots and sticks.
Control of media has also been instrumental. A stream of oil revenues
has enabled the government to keep the police force and other `power’
ministries well-paid and fit. A brutal clampdown of a protest campaign
in Baku in the aftermath of the controversial parliamentary vote in
2005 is just one example.
If sticks were used to instill fear and gain mass acquiescence,
carrots went mostly to the ruler’s cronies, friends and family members
but were also dispersed on public goods. In this country, planned
economy was not replaced by a fully-fledged market with a flourishing
private sector. A partial economic reform that was implemented meant
handing some of the Communist-era state enterprises over to regime
cronies. Most important, the state has remained in control of the
economy dominated by petroleum sector. Loyalty was compensated with
access to state resources. Not only oil and gas industry but also
other lucrative sectors like transportation, fishery, international
trade and tariffs have been in service of various rent-seeking groups.
Patronage was also used: government jobs were given as a means of
cooptation (a more thorough discussion of what has kept the system
working can be found in my article in the Harvard International
Review, Feb 28, 2009: ).
These were enough to maintain a support base and manipulate public
opinion. Added to this was international neglect and Western
self-interest as regards setting priorities in the Caspian region. Oil
means large investments which require stable environment and
predictability. Western governments’ interest in Caspian oil meant
they would support whoever ensures that precious stability. While the
West has been balancing its energy interests and democracy rhetoric,
Russia has used its model of `managed democracy’ as an alternative to
a more demanding Western model of liberal democracy. Under Putin and
now Medvedev, Russia has become more assertive and authoritarian. It
has served as a role model for neighboring post-Soviet leaders. In a
certain sense, Russia can be said to be promoting authoritarianism in
the former Soviet states by sending its election monitoring missions
which confirm the results of usually manipulated elections and thus
provide external legitimation for undemocratic regimes. The same can
be said about a handful of researchers and research institutions (e.g.
the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute) as well as some European
politicians (for instance, British MP Michael Hancock saying that
scraping term limits is democratic), lobbyists and some state-backed
NGO’s who have all endorsed the strongmen’s grip on power in this
Caspian nation (Ken Silverstein has had a series of articles on this
in Harper’s Magazine).
While it seems that the Obama administration takes a `quieter’
approach to promoting democracy abroad, it cannot — assuming this is
an issue of domestic affairs — keep silent about the developments in
Azerbaijan. Neither can it abandon democracy promotion from its
foreign policy agenda altogether. Instead, this is an ample
opportunity for the US to stand for democracy. Itself a model of
presidentialist government the U.S. could urge the government of
Azerbaijan to create a truly presidential system based on the
separation-of-powers and a fixed term in the office for president.
Farid Guliyev is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the School
of Humanities and Social Sciences in Jacobs University – Bremen.