AID TO GANGSTER STATES
(Funding Graft in Russia and Africa)
By George B.N. Ayittey, Ph.D.
The Washington Times, Monday, November 22, 1999; page A19.
Shed no tears for the Clinton administrations pain over the Russian
money-laundering scandal. This largely self-inflicted pain stems from the
administrations reluctance to learn from its own blunders elsewhere,
particularly Africa. It invested massively in the rhetoric and charisma of
"leaders," thereby setting itself up to be duped by crackpot democrats.
The administration seeks out an "Abraham Lincoln," and develops a warm, cozy
personal relationship - or "partnership" with him to transform his
country. Thus, so much faith was invested in Boris Yeltsin and a small
cadre of "reformers," led by Viktor Chernomyrdin. Western aid dollars
flowed. Staggering from a hangover, the administration now finds itself
swindled by gangster bureaucrats, who, during the party, engaged in a
massive heist of Russian assets for transfer overseas.
Similarly during his historic trip to Africa in March 1998, President
Clinton hailed the presidents of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Eritrea
as the "new leaders of Africa" and spoke fondly of the "new African
renaissance sweeping the continent. But barely two months after Clinton's
visit, Ethiopia and Eritrea were at war, the "new African renaissance" in
tatters and the rest of the "new leaders were at each others throat in the
Congo conflict. Were this not enough, the administrations other African
"partners turned out to be reform acrobats and crocodile liberators..
Like Russia, huge sums have fled Africa. According to the United Nations,
$200 billion or 90 percent of the sub-Saharan Africas GDP was shipped to
foreign banks in 1991 alone. Yet, this kamikaze plunder, which occurred
under the watchful eyes of Inspector Clousseau and the Keystone Cops (the
IMF and the World Bank), elicited no outrage from the Western media and the
Clinton administration for reasons of political correctness.
The administration's policies toward Russia and Africa are fundamentally
flawed. The near-fatal obsession with an "Abraham Lincoln" encourages all
sorts of charlatans and hucksters to project themselves as such to win
Western favors and recognition. They parrot "democracy" and "capitalism" by
rote, not so much out of conviction nor with the will to implement them, but
because such euphonious utterances please Western aid donors.
Second, the starry-eyed belief in the teeth of abundant evidence to the
contrary -- that a "government" exists in the recipient country, that cares
about and responds to the needs of its people, is astonishing. What is now
proven to exist in many African countries and Russia is a gangster state - a
"government" hijacked by a phalanx of vagabonds who use the machinery of the
state to develop their own pockets. The chief bandit is often the head of
state himself. As the director of the World Bank's own Poverty and Social
Policy Department, Ishrait Husain, himself observed: "[Market reform] is
failing in many African countries precisely because their governments
misappropriate funds. They spend large sums of money promoting their own
interests, building airports in their home towns, increasing military
spending, and buying more fashionable cars.
The third flaw is the persistent failure to distinguish between outcomes and
the processes or institutions required to achieve those outcomes. A
democratic Russia or Africa, based on the free market system, are outcomes
of often long and arduous processes. Most critical are the transparency of
the processes, the fairness of the electoral rules, mechanisms for peaceful
resolution of electoral disputes, among others. By focusing almost
exclusively on the outcomes and paying scant attention to bothersome details
of the processes, Western leaders often become, by default, complicit in the
commission of egregious electoral frauds that produce a pirate democracy.
In Africa, the democratization process has been stalled by political
chicanery and strong-arm tactics. Incumbent autocrats appoint their own
Electoral Commissioners, empanel a fawning coterie of sycophants to write
the constitution, massively pad the voter's register and hold fraudulent
elections to return themselves to power.
The record on market liberalization is even more dismal, despite the rosy
portrait the Clinton administration, the World Bank and the IMF paint of
Africa. More than $50 billion has been poured into Africa by USAID, the
World Bank and the IMF since 1990 to support market reform in Africa. Yet,
the prospects remain bleak. Ghana, Lesotho, and Uganda, for example, were
all the rage two years ago. Not any more.
A market economy cannot be established without secure property rights, free
flow of information, the rule of law and mechanisms for contract
enforcement. Since these processes or foundations are missing in Russia and
most African countries, the free market economies the Clinton administration
hopes to establish in these countries are pies in the sky, regardless of
assurances by Yeltsin and the "new African leaders."
A new approach that emphasizes institution-building or processes is
imperative. Leaders come and go but institutions endure. Four are critical:
1. An independent central bank, vital for monetary and economic stability,
as well as stanch capital flight. 2. An independent judiciary, crucial for
the enforcement of rule of law, protection of property and to end rapacious
plunder. 3. An independent and free media, to facilitate the free flow of
information, to expose criminal wrong-doing, and to disseminate ideas. 4. A
neutral and professional armed or security forces, to protect life and
property and ensure law and order. Witness East Timor.
At the minimum, Western aid should be made contingent upon the establishment
these institutions, which are established by civil society, not leaders. An
implicit conflict of interest is involved when leaders are asked to set up
the very institutions that would limit their power or the arbitrariness by
which it is exercised.
Re-channeling existing aid programs to reach the people or civil society
would have much greater impact in transforming Russia and Africa than
placing unstinting faith in Lincoln wannabes.
_______________________
The author, a native of Ghana, is an Associate Professor of Economics at
American University and President of The Free Africa Foundation, both in
Washington, DC. His new book is Africa In Chaos.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
