Power and corruption
The wheel's come full circle

Sergei DUVANOV, specially for the International Eurasian Institute

Stereotypes often prevent from evaluating corruption correctly not only public opinion but also professional analysts. Traditionally, these stereotypes prompt us see corruption as an economic and legal category. Moreover, when evaluating national political and economic processes this category is considered of secondary importance at best.

Many analysts regard corruption as a mere consequence of political and economic, socio-ethnic, and even moral reasons. From its genesis viewpoint, corruption undoubtedly owes to all these reasons. But it is necessary to admit that at a definite stage in development of a state corruption itself is able to become a predominant factor that defines both the state politics and economy, and even social relations in society.

In the opinion of analyst Nurbulat Masanov, corruption in Kazakhstan serves as "a foundation on which state and political system are laid." He believes that "after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new type of state has been built on the post-Soviet space, except for the three Baltic states, which is based on total corruption. Its political form is presidential republic."

Basically, I agree with the above, but would like to point out that, over time, the pervasive corruption has brought under its control the entire political system. It has absorbed it, adjusted the state machine to itself, and laid down new "rules of the game."

As a result, political authoritarianism and social demagogy of the authorities have become an unavoidable consequence of pervasive corruption in state system. Speaking about Kazakhstan, this is a very important point. Not the usurpation of power has brought corruption into the country, on the contrary, corruption has brought to life authoritarianism in the form of presidential republic in order to protect itself from subversive democracy.

The democratic system and freedom of speech are real mechanisms that allow to effectively struggle against corruption. Therefore, the only method to survive for a corrupt system is to eliminate democratic principles from state operation. For this reason, according to Mr. Masanov, "corruption itself has taken under its immediate control the entire government and political system."

Clearly, corruption is not something abstract, it's just a mechanism that regulates the relationship between people in the system of state power. Or else, there are definite bearers of the corruption philosophy in the person of state officials. These people are personally interested in operation of this system, and their interest is quite material. When it comes to Kazakhstan, professor Masanov is convinced that "today nothing could work in the country any longer without personal interest of the bureaucracy class, and corruption has become the driving force for the entire state machine."

The example of Kazakhstan prompts us to admit that corruption as part of the state authority system has turned into a self-sufficient force. It has become a real political category. Its time now to consider new types of political systems as individual existing alongside with liberal-democratic, social-democratic, and others: liberal-corrupt (Japan, South Korea, and others), authoritarian-corrupt (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, and Kazakhstan), etatist-corrupt (Russia, Ukraine, and others), and ideological-corrupt (China).

Kazakhstan's authoritarian-corrupt political system is most typical. It has the social basis, the philosophy represented by a branchy system of public officials. The whole state system is adjusted to serving the interests of the corrupt system members and to attending to socio-political and economic relations existing in the society.

For example, the job of the majority of courts' is just to resolve disputes between separate subjects of the corrupt system. But as courts are part of this system, they as a rule judge by the secret rules and norms of the corrupt system. The essence of those rules is corrupt decision-making at government level.

Simply speaking, corruption that has become a state principle means that you have pay for any service in the system of state relations. In theory, there are the Constitution, laws, norms, and rules regulated by appropriate legislation acts. In fact, all this is just window-dressing. The law is simply evaded if you pay the people responsible for operation of this or that part of the state machine.

If you want to win a suit in order that you son not soldier, or get a higher education certificate, or get something else forbidden by law - all this is really not a problem. What you need is to have money and know whom to give it to. Though there may be some difficulties if someone else would like to have the same. In this case, the richer and more influential wins.

Today, you need a certificate, and you pay a certain official to get it. Tomorrow, that very official himself will come to you to give you a bribe for your service. Next day, both of you will pay to a third person to help solve your problems. All is interdependent, and everyone depends on each other.

Graft and bribe have become a mandatory element in your relationships with those around you. If you agree that bribe is a basis for those relationships, especially those with the state, you harmonically fit in the country's and society's way of life. If you start a "mutiny" against those relations, you fate will be unenviable: you are destined to go from one official door to another for life.

The law-enforcement authorities, whose task is to struggle with corruption, carefully guard the corrupt system's interests. Courts and the police, as a rule, side with those who acts in line with corrupt system principles and punish those who wish to live by the existing laws.

Symbolically enough, the role of a defense lawyer in Kazakh courts has been reduced to middleman's functions. Lawyers who know back ways, whom and how much to give in bribe have become most expensive.

The overwhelming majority of the press only imitates a fight with corruption. In fact, the press is deprived of any possibility to air any concrete facts of financially motivated abuse of authority.

Moreover, the press objectively fulfills the function of providing the existing corrupt system with information support. All the critical materials that appear in the press or reports of government efforts in fighting corruption create an illusion of the power not involved in the corrupt system. As if corruption and the authorities exist separately, and the authorities are intensively fighting against corruption.

Under this scheme, it is OK to criticize power for lack of attention to corruption problems, for insufficient efforts in fighting it and even for conniving at corrupt members of society. But the most important point in this case is that power is corruption itself, that fighting corruption means fighting the existing power system remains behind the scene. It is evident that there is no corruption outside power and even there is no power outside corruption.

We should acknowledge that media controlled by authorities do their job in misinforming masses well enough. Still there are people, who believe that power can easily defeat corruption if it really wants to, that the President tries to fight it, but his dim entourage prevents him from carrying out his noble duty.

Allegations that mass media publications are full of information about corruption disclosures and punishments can not serve as proofs of fight with corruption in Kazakhstan. An objective analysis of those materials indicates that in most cases either competitors’ fights or clans’ confrontation is behind those "disclosures".

Both are the essential part of the present state and political system, and prove the existence of certain contradictions between corrupted community members.

The major distinction feature of the state built on corruption is secondary position of the law. The basic principle of this type of state is the use of the whole state machine to get personal benefit.

If in a common, i.e. normal state the authorities oversee the observance of law and get their salaries for that just punishing those who violate the law; in Kazakhstan, on the contrary, the authorities are interested in direct violation of laws and legal norms because this allows them to personally benefit.

Here is an example. A car owner violates traffic rules. He/she faces a dilemma.

The first option is to leave his/her drivers license with the State Automobile Inspection (SAI) inspector after the protocol was completed and go to the bank, where he/she has to pay fine. After that, he/she has to find the license in one of SAI divisions and get it back after waiting in several long lines (at best). In the worst case, the driver can be forced to take a driver's examination. This is a troublesome procedure. All this can take from half day to several days and cost a lot of money and big ado. Another option, which is much simpler, is to give a bribe to the inspector. The amount of the bribe is much less than the official fine. It is naive to assume that someone will prefer a weeklong dangle instead of a small bribe. It works this way in all sectors of governmental service. The principle is simple: to create conditions, when it is easier for the person to give a bribe that to go through the jungle of bureaucratic dangle.

But the most awful is that graft has turned into a NORM, a kind of moral imperative. We can state that this has become a strict rule in the official circles. Actually, they created a special code, according to which everyone, who tries to solve his/her problems legally, is considered a "stranger", who should be punished by the "perdition" procedure.

Everyone ignoring principles of corrupt "give-take" system and trying to live by laws unavoidably gets under the pressure of the system.

If on the first stage of corrupt community formation officials tried to get out of such truth-lovers as soon as possible by solving their problems, now none is afraid of them. The system has strengthened so much, became so self-sufficient that is capable to "press" strangers forcing them to accept its rules.

Today a person trying to find justice at court without a bribe acts unreasonably from residents’ point of view. But from Kazakhstan corrupt community point of view, that person acts illegally and is even considered as opposition member. It is considered today as a challenge and this person is foredoomed to loose a suit no matter he/she is right.

When we say there is no corruption outside the state power system it does not mean that average society members are not subject to its stereotypes. The system of corruption engages new and new members into the orbit of its influence while the state power bodies develop. It’s like a cancer tumor penetrating the whole body little by little, like metastasis infecting new and new cells of the organism.

When a train conductor abuses power to accommodate non-ticketed passengers in the car and takes money from them – this is corruption as well. The conductor, who collects money behind the box office, shares it with his manager. In his turn, the manager provides some kind of a "roof" to their employees to do that. Managers protect the law-breakers from controlling bodies, but forces employees to split money with them.

Same thing is with the road inspector. He gives the great deal of collected bribes to his commander. That person, observing corrupt discipline, gives part of money collected by his employees to his managers. Those individuals "feed" their managers and so on.

Thus, the conductor and the inspector, average citizens are the first stage of institutional corruption pyramids in the system of corrupt community, the lower level of a giant corruption iceberg pressing Kazakhstan society like a heavy burden.

Actually, Kazakhstan corrupt community is today the state itself. The Republic of Kazakhstan formally exists, it has its own flag, constitution, parliament, courts, prosecutors office and a lot of other governmental bodies. At first glance, all those bodies take care of the law and order in the country and see to that the national heritage enriches. But to look closer at the subject, we find out that the constitution and laws are just a formal attribute and the real mechanism of conflict situations solving are non-written rules of Kazakhstan corrupt community.

However you can ask a question why the pervasive corruption of government bodies is, as Professor Masanov argues, a basis of the presidential power and authoritative state model?

The answer is obvious. In the conditions of overall corruption among officials, there can be no innocent or non-compromised persons at all. The system of corruption supposes that when involved in the system, any, even the most decent official can not stay "white and bushy". A person has to accept the system rules, otherwise it will crush you and throw away. "White crows" can not survive within it for a long time. Such total involvement of the officials (and politicians) is of great avail to President Nazarbayev, as he is able to control everyone.

So, until they serve him and their pork system well, they will be flourishing. But as soon as they balk and show their ambitions, or pretend to be independent, compromising facts will come to the surface, and a rebel will be severely punished.

So, the majority of politicians just can not compete with the incumbent president. All of them are corrupt, everyone is marked.

Thus, the pervasive corruption presents an effective mechanism to do away with political opponents and the way to monopolize power. Corruption is a mechanism to concentrate power and to involve government bureaucracy into a frank-pledged responsibility system. It is a mechanism to control despotically the government officials, and therefore, the bureaucratic system, in general.

It is not accidentally that secret services dominate in all authoritarian, corrupt states and these services are headed by the most trusted persons, or even by the closest relatives of the leaders.

One of the major tasks of such secret services is to collect compromising facts regarding everyone. For a time being, the facts are just deposited and are used in case when an official behaves in the way that does not suit his master. For example, when someone would have a shy at running for presidency.

The recent trial of Ex-premier Akezhan Kazhegeldin is very characteristic. Why all the involved compromising materials were not used earlier, when Kazhegeldin was a Premier? Why he became "a bad guy" only after he said he was going to run for president?

It would be logically now to bring cases against his every "accomplice", primarily against those who concealed information on corruption facts, and first of all, the President himself who is to be held responsible for his direct subordinates.

But this will most unlikely to happen and so the trial of Mr. Kazhegeldin is clearly politically motivated. It is demonstrative and its aim is to intimidate those who go against the system and the joint responsibility principle in the corrupt community.

Kazakh authoritarianism, in the person of the President Nazarbayev, has brought to life an integral corruption system and, within this system, a new social class of corrupt officials. Today, it is the army of officials at all levels deeply interested in the system existence. The ruling clan imitating struggle against corruption actually supports it through appropriate legislation and legal acts, by cultivating patron-client relations and neglecting human rights and freedoms. Moreover, it has become dependent on the corruption it fathered, it has become its part and parcel. Today, within the frank-pledge system, authoritarianism and corruption are deeply interested in mutual existence and mutual flourishing. The wheel's come full circle.

http://www.iicas.org/articles/publ_4_10_01.htm