Europe, Headlines, Human Rights

EUROPE: Democracy Failing Under Russian Shadow

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, May 4 2009 (IPS) - Eighteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of the newly created republics are still struggling to find a working democracy amidst failing economies.

"I believe that the main causes of political instability in post-Soviet states are the weaknesses of democratic political tradition, civil society and rule of law in these countries," Yevgeny Volk, head of Moscow's office of the Heritage Foundation, a policy think tank, told IPS. "The legacy of a totalitarian past and its institutions, such as Communist parties, is still strong."

And Russia has an interest in "destabilising these nations in order to discredit them in western public opinion and to alienate it against integrating these states into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as reliable and secure partners," Volk said.

Governments in these countries, he said, had done very little to improve economic performance, diversify economies, and reduce dependence on Russian energy resources, labour and its consumer goods market.

Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia are going through tough times. Ukraine, which shares borders with Russia, Belarus, Moldova and Hungary, successfully organised the "orange revolution" in 2005, but its now third president, Viktor Yushchenko, whose term of office is to end late this year or early next year, is deeply unpopular.

In Georgia, opposition groups are holding nationwide protests against President Mikheil Saakashvili. His policy of integrating the ex-Soviet state with Europe and NATO, and his increasingly totalitarian tendencies have sparked criticism from opposition groups. His severe handling of the opposition – he himself came to power through street protests in 2003 – has triggered sharp criticism in the west.

The Georgian leader's popularity has plummeted since last August's disastrous war with Russia, and his failure to carry out the democratic reforms promised after the revolution that brought him to power. After the 'rose revolution' in Georgia and the 'orange revolution' in Ukraine, democratic growth has stagnated in Ukraine and even reversed in Georgia.

However, while political instability in Ukraine and Georgia have led to limited media and political freedom, the reverse is the case in Moldova. There has been political stability in Moldova ever since the communists came to power in 2001 and again in 2005.

"The communists used this strength to control the executive and the judiciary," George Dura, political researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels told IPS. "Moldovan authorities also increasingly put obstacles to media freedom. I think that the main reason for protests in Moldova is failing democracy linked to growing political stability and control under an increasingly authoritarian regime."

Moldova emerged as one of the poorest countries in Europe after the 1991 Soviet collapse. Up to a fourth of the population of four million works in the EU or Russia, and their remittances amount to almost 40 percent of Moldova's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the World Bank.

While older Moldovans tend to regard Russia as their country's chief ally, many youth look west to Europe and neighbouring Romania, which shares close linguistic, ethnic and historical ties with Moldova. Many have joined protests to demand unification with Romania, a member of the European Union and NATO. President Vladimir Voronin has accused Romanian authorities of supporting the violent protests and of helping the opposition organise the political revolt.

And many in all these countries blame Russia.

"The development of democracy in ex-Soviet space is not failing, it is deliberately an attack from Russian authorities," minister for reintegration of Georgia Temuri Yakobashvili told IPS by email. "Democratic achievements are still fragile and need some kind of greenhouse conditions, or at least not storms or a hurricane. The west should play its part as well," said Yakobashvili, a former executive vice-president of the Tbilisi-based Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS).

A spokesman for the opposition Georgian Conservative Party, Kakha Kukava, says the opposition is struggling to secure a democratic change of leadership.

"It is a wide question, the list of mistakes by Saakashvili is long such as planned restriction of media freedom, incomprehensible militarisation, inexplicable military rhetoric that led us to the August conflict, a discredited judicial system, state pressure on business, election fraud and as a result non-existence of real opposition in the parliament, and worse, negligence the of rule of law," Kukava told IPS from Tbilisi.

Chris Walker from the London-based Freedom House, an NGO that tracks democracy in many countries, told IPS that "efforts to advance democratic reform in poor countries such as Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova will invariably be put to even greater tests given the depth and sharpness of the global economic downturn. Therefore, political leadership in these nascent and partially consolidated democracies must find ways to engage the public and seek buy-in for policies that are capable of meeting these enormous challenges."

Walker said that the reform challenge throughout the former Soviet Union remains formidable, and virtually every state in the region is confronting serious democratic governance problems. "All of the countries of the Soviet region will undoubtedly face enormous challenges in the coming term but those that work towards more accountable and transparent governance will be better positioned to succeed in a modern, globalised environment."