Sri Lanka is still dealing with the aftermath of its most devastating economic crisis since independence, a government without popular support and intensifying geopolitical competition in its neighborhood, a year after the Sri Lanka’s massive unrest. Known as the Aragalaya protests which were spurred by the economic crisis, the protests led to mass resignations across the government with former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing the country in July 2022.

In the year since, the country has secured an IMF agreement, and its economy has ambled toward a slow path of recovery. However, there have still been concerns on the human rights front as the current government of Ranil Wickremesinghe has clamped down on further protests and continually postponed elections.

Sri Lanka’s economy appears to be making a slow and steady recovery, but its governance challenges must be addressed to sustain the momentum. Its domestic politics, economics and foreign relations have evolved one year after the country-wide protests.

The government of Wickremesinghe, who was elected president by the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the party of the once politically dominant Rajapaksa family, is engaged in sustained efforts to enact repressive laws that stifle dissent and curtail the freedoms of media and civil society. Since parliamentary elections have not been held in the aftermath of the political crisis the current government is the same as the one headed by Gotabaya, the only difference is that Wickremesinghe is the president. Although the conditions of the IMF bailout package have pushed the government to propose some reforms, such as a new anti-corruption law, the lack of political will makes it unlikely that these initiatives will precipitate change in government behavior. Particularly since those in Parliament are the very same people who were part of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime and responsible for the multi-dimensional crisis with which Sri Lanka is still grappling. These parliamentarians have been reportedly demanding ministerial portfolios from Wickremesinghe to continue their support to him, thereby demonstrating the ongoing corrupt political culture and lack of accountability.

The military continues to acquire land in the north and east to expand military camps. Security agencies and the military have continued their surveillance, intimidation and harassment of civil society organizations, the media, families of the disappeared, former combatants and Tamil political and civic activity in conflict-affected areas. The draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, which does not adhere to international human rights standards and the implementation of which has resulted in human rights violations, is still on the statute books. As part of the Sinhalization of the north and east, which has rapidly escalated, Hindu temples are being destroyed and in their place Buddhist temples being built.

There has also been no progress in holding perpetrators of human rights violations related to the war accountable. Nor has there been any attempt to provide a political solution to the ethnic conflict or undertake substantive constitutional reform. Instead, to avoid being subject to the scrutiny of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the government is proposing the establishment of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, its version of the truth-seeking mechanism, while hundreds of recommendations of similar previous commissions remain unimplemented. 

The 2022 protests did ignite increased public discourse on issues of public interest and demands for accountability, at least on certain issues, such as how public funds are spent and corruption. Yet, the decades-long rights struggle of communities, such as the Tamils, which have challenged the state and particularly the Rajapaksas, was largely absent in the narrative and the consciousness of the protesters.

Increased political awareness among the southern public has the potential to be the beginning of the acknowledgment of historical discrimination and repression, which should ideally result in the south heeding and addressing calls for truth, justice and equal citizenship. Such realization can lead to a pluralistic and diverse Sri Lanka where one would not have to divest one’s ethnic or religious identity to be Sri Lankan.

Hence, legal reforms alone will not change the way Sri Lanka’s institutions and politicians behave and perform. To ensure that the momentum generated in 2022 for accountability from elected representatives evolves into sustained challenges to entrenched systems of discrimination and corruption, the root causes of Sri Lanka’s crises and the multiple elephants in the room must be addressed.

Sri Lanka defaulted on its international debt a year ago, after facing unprecedented inflation and a balance of payments crisis. In sight of securing a new IMF program, Sri Lanka’s relationship with New Delhi has grown considerably stronger along economic and diplomatic lines, while their already close defense ties are largely unchanged. By contrast, China’s response has been highly disappointing to Sri Lanka, which continues to wait on Beijing’s full cooperation in debt restructuring.

India’s economic support to Sri Lanka predates the 2022 crisis. In 2020, New Delhi agreed to a $400 million currency swap under the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) framework. For more than a year, India was reportedly silent on whether it would approve Sri Lanka’s requests for an additional $1.1 billion currency swap and a moratorium on bilateral debt. Since early 2022, however, India’s support for Sri Lanka has been unprecedented. New Delhi perhaps realized the trendline of the impacts to the south was increasingly linked to its own economic and security interests and the credibility of its “neighborhood first” diplomacy.

The nature of support has been mostly lines of credit, currency swaps and deferred repayments. In January 2022, India provided another currency swap of $400 million under the SAARC framework. It also deferred settlement of $2 billion in Sri Lanka’s Asian Clearing Union trade credits, which are mostly for imports from India. In February 2022, it offered a line of credit worth $500 million for importing fuel from India, and the following month it provided a credit facility of $1 billion to buy food and medicine from India and further aid worth roughly $72 million. No less significantly, in January 2023, New Delhi provided the first assurances to the International Monetary Fund to enable the latter’s $2.9 billion package. Recently, India extended its $1 billion credit line for another year and appears likely to offer Sri Lanka a 12-year term to repay its debts. Later this month, President Wickremesinghe will make his first visit to India since entering office.

Beyond economic and diplomatic ties, India continues to be Sri Lanka’s primary defense partner. In the past year, the Sri Lanka Air Force has received a Dornier maritime surveillance aircraft from India, while the two countries held their annual defense dialogue in February and the Sri Lanka-India naval exercise, SLINEX, in April.

In contrast, China has been mostly uncooperative despite being Sri Lanka’s largest bilateral lender. Earlier, it had offered a currency swap worth $1.5 billion that was subsequently criticized because Sri Lanka could not benefit from its stringent terms. It also offered another $500 million loan with interest in 2021. Most importantly, China’s reluctance to actively participate in the debt-restructuring process with other lenders has cemented deeply held concerns about its transactional approach to Sri Lanka and other growing economies. Earlier this year, China finally agreed to a moratorium on debt servicing to Sri Lanka for only two years. But questions remain about whether Beijing will deliver on its assurances about debt restructuring.

Nevertheless, Sri Lankan officials representing their smaller state cannot afford to criticize China. Instead, officials emphasize their hope that Beijing will cooperate on the debt crisis and in other areas of the relationship. Wickremesinghe is expected to visit China in October to seek foreign direct investment in several projects, including for a potential $4 billion oil refinery in Hambantota.

Source: USIP

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Bad habits die badly. Three hundred fifty years of Dutch colonial rule, where expatriate European masters professing noble, selfless public service for the Kingdom of the Netherlands were notoriously corrupt; apart from loading up with as much as they could swindle, shake down or steal, why on Earth would any sane Dutchman be adventurous or foolhardy enough to go out to the Indies? The trip out by sailing ship was long and dangerous.

Even sailors were in on the game: their coveralls never had pockets, making it difficult to smuggle spices, in an era when cloves, nutmeg and mace were worth more than their weight in gold, back in Europe. How could this be? Remember: no refrigeration meant that fresh meat quickly went bad, so spices were worked into it to cover the pong of decaying flesh.

Corruption is an ancient curse in Indonesia, one handed down from the time of the sultans, who lived off the hard labor of the farmers but only got a portion of what was due, as their crooked middlemen and money-lenders took their cut.

The United East India Company, “Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie”, or V.O.C., went bankrupt several times, until a disgusted Netherlands government took it over and ran it directly from Amsterdam.

Once Indonesia won its independence, in 1949, officials of the new nation found it impossible to shake off the curse of official theft. Worse, once fiery President Sukarno kicked out all foreigners who refused to take Indonesian citizenship and nationalized their enterprises, the economy of this fabulously wealthy archipelago slipped into a death spiral. Foreign investors looked longingly but stayed away.

In 1960, enraged by reports that ethnic Chinese rice wholesalers were hoarding grain to drive up prices, while many Indonesians went hungry, Sukarno raged “Show me some proof and some names and I’ll have them shot.” But this was all bluster, as government only survived by taxing the long-suffering businessman. Ordinary people never bothered to pay taxes.

Once the bloodshed of 1965 abated, and a new military regime took over the country – the quiet, lethal, proverb-quoting President Suharto, destined to rule for some 32 years – corruption became rationalized. If you wished to win a court case, you would appoint a retired admiral or general onto your Board of Commissioners. If there was a problem with importing machinery for your factory, a colonel in military intelligence (on your payroll) would phone up Customs Clearance at the port. Cynical foreign observers referred to the Indonesian legal system as “an auction”: the highest bidder wins a favorable verdict.

The hapless Indonesians were subject to the [mostly-benign] rule of the smiling General, and his smiling wife. Suharto had suffered a rough childhood, so he was determined that his own family would be large, close and loving. The public did not see Soeharto’s six children as a blessing (as he did) but a curse, along with the predations of a galaxy of relatives and cronies, all with their own banks, factories, supermarket chains and plantations. It was never wise to try to compete with orde baru (“New Order” – you can guess where that came from) businesses. They also qualified for favorable government loans from state banks, and other perks.

The carefree Tommy Suharto, later sent to prison for ordering the murder of a judge, was known to travel about with a large sack of currencies – dollars, Yen, Pounds Sterling, Euros – and would ladle them out for anything or anyone that caught his fancy. His company “won” a 30-year no-bid contract to export LNG to Japan.

In such an environment, how could a civil servant, whose official salary would barely pay for a rice allotment, resist the temptation to link up with an ethnic Chinese entrepreneur, and open a few businesses on their own? Or pad procurement contracts?

Corruption practices have cost the Indonesian economy massively. A number of studies convey how countries with high levels of corruption tend to have low tax ratios. Public spending is large but not optimal, and foreign investment is minimal.

This is one of the challenges that 2024 presidential candidates have to face. Approaching the end of his two-term tenure, incumbent President Jokowi is faced with a 4 point decline in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), from 38 to 34.

Indonesia Corruption Watch reported several sectors causing the most state losses due to corruption practices, consisting of the trade sector (IDR 20.9 trillion), transportation (IDR 8.82 trillion), natural resources (IDR 6.7 trillion), land (IDR 2.66 trillion),  utilities (IDR 982 billion), banking (IDR 516 billion), defense and security (IDR 453 billion), villages (IDR 381 billion), government (IDR 238 billion) and education (IDR 130 billion).

No matter who wins the Presidency, it will be an uphill battle.

The post Challenges for 2024 Presidential Candidates in Eradicating Corruption appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Kazakhstan has elections on March 19 and for the first time in nearly 20 years, there’s a chance that candidates who are not from pro-government parties might win seats.

Polls will be conducted for regional, district and city administrations known as maslikhats, as well as for the Mazhilis, the lower house of parliament.

The Mazhilis elections will differ from the last four parliamentary polls (2007, 2012, 2016 and 2021).

On June 5, voters in Kazakhstan approved changes to roughly one-third of the country’s constitution. Some of those changes affected the Mazhilis. There were 107 seats in the legislature, but nine seats reserved for the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan—a body representing the many ethnic groups in the country and chaired by the president—were abolished. Only the 98 seats previously filled via elections remain.

The amendments also reintroduced a split system for electing deputies last used in 2004.

In the elections, 69 seats will be chosen according to party lists and 29 through voting in single-mandate districts.

In the last three parliamentary elections starting with 2012, the seats were all taken by the same three pro-presidential parties – the ruling Nur-Otan party, Ak Zhol and the Communist People’s Party.

Pro-presidential parties are guaranteed to have a parliamentary majority since only they are competing for the 69 party list seats. But the 29 seats available in single-mandate districts offer a chance for people not affiliated with pro-government parties to at least have a few voices in parliament.

That would be in keeping with a pledge made by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev when he addressed the need for constitutional change just weeks after the mass unrest and violence of last year’s “Bloody January” left, officially, 238 people dead.

Tokayev said the people would have a greater say in how the country is run. The constitutional amendments were thus part of the path to creating a “new” Kazakhstan.

Deputy chairman of Kazakhstan’s Central Election Commission Konstantin Petrov announced on February 19 that 435 candidates were registered to compete for the 29 single-mandate seats, with “on average 15 candidates per mandate.”

Petrov added that 76 candidates were from the registered political parties.

Disqualified

Since Petrov’s remarks, two dozen candidates, at least, have been disqualified, mostly for issues relating to tax or documents. A few have won court cases to reinstate their registrations.

It appears that all of those disqualified from Mazhilis or maslikhat polls are independent candidates. None of the 76 candidates put forward by registered political parties seem to have encountered any registration problems.

Some of the better-known independent candidates still in the running face a daunting race.

Inga Imanbai is running for a Mazhilis seat in a district in commercial capital Almaty and is competing against 36 other candidates.

Imanbai is the wife of Zhanbolat Mamai, the leader of the unregistered Democratic Party of Kazakhstan. He was detained in February for organising a memorial meeting for victims of the January violence and has been in jail since.

Imanbai has been an outspoken critic of the government, often appearing at press conferences. She released an open letter on the day US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kazakhstan. It referred to the detention of her husband and criticised government policies.

Other independents bidding for seats in the maslikhats have been disqualified, some because of alleged offences the committed during the January 2022 unrest, known in Kazakh as “Qandy Qantar.”

The events remain a sore issue for many in Kazakhstan. The government has not come close to disclosing the details of what appears to have amounted to an attempt to oust Tokayev from power. The turn-of-the-year unrest began with widespread peaceful anti-government protests.

‘20,000 terrorists’

Tokayev claimed “20,000 terrorists” were marauding around Kazakhstan. But his remarks quickly slipped from the official narrative of the events and there is still no compelling evidence that terrorists were involved.

Relatives of people detained, or imprisoned, in connection with the unrest continue to say their incarcerated kin have been wrongly accused. So do relatives of some of those killed in the violence, who were posthumously branded terrorists by the authorities.

Several independent candidates are being investigated for alleged roles in the unrest.

One of the most publicised cases involves activist Aigerim Tleuzhan. She was running as a candidate for Almaty’s maslikhat in district 3.

Tleuzhan was rejected as a candidate in mid-February. The district election commission had doubts about her bank documents, but the Supreme Court overruled its decision on February 27, permitting Tleuzhan the right to compete in the elections.

On February 28, Tleuzhan went to the local election commission to pick up her official candidate’s registration papers. She was detained as she exited the building on charges of being one of the people who attempted to “seize” Almaty airport during Bloody January.

On March 11, the decision to bar Tleuzhan from running for a maslikhat seat was confirmed.

There have been no genuine registered opposition parties in Kazakhstan for some 15 years, so it has been impossible for anyone not in a pro-presidential party to win a seat.

Several opposition parties have attempted in recent years to register with the Justice Ministry, but have continually been rejected, usually because of unsatisfactory registration documents.

But the Baytak party, a green party, and the Respublika party formed by businessmen, both pro-government and both previously unknown to the public, registered easily in, respectively, late November and mid-December.

So even though seven parties will compete in these elections, all are pro-government. It’s been that way for 20 years.

That raises questions about how the public will react if only a few or none of the independent candidates win seats.

The people protesting in early 2022 wanted changes in the way the country was run. They also desired more say in determining the country’s course.

Tokayev promised exactly that, but if the election results show that essentially the status quo has been preserved, it will be difficult for many in Kazakhstan to see any change at all.

Ominously, Tokayev seems to be preparing for future unrest.

On March 13, Tokayev announced a series of initiatives to modernise the government, but his comments focused on preventing “illegal activities”. He said, “People who sow discord in the country and call for disrupting public order will be severely punished.”

Tokayev added that the initiatives would be formally announced after the elections.

His words echoed comments from Interior Minister Marat Akhmetzhanov, who said on March 9 that Kazakhstan would toughen punishment for “calls to mass riots.”

One could get the impression that the authorities already believe the public will not view the outcome of the elections as a step towards creating a New Kazakhstan and are letting it be known that anyone with plans to protest at the results will be punished, just the way they would have been in the Old Kazakhstan.

Source : Bne Intellinews

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