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8 Leaders
Government under covid-19
A pandemic of power grabs
Autocrats and would-be autocrats see opportunity in disaster
ll theworld’s attention isoncovid-19.Perhapsitwasacoin-
Acidence that China chose this moment to tighten its control
around disputed reefs in the South China Sea, arrest the most
prominent democrats in Hong Kong and tear a hole in Hong
Kong’s Basic Law (see China section). But perhaps not. Rulers
everywhere have realised that now is the perfect time to do out-
rageous things, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the world
will barely notice. Many are taking advantage of the pandemic to
grab more power for themselves (see International section).
China’s actions in Hong Kong are especially troubling. Since
Britain handed the territory back to China in 1997, Hong Kong has
been governed under the formula of “one country, two systems”.
By and large, its people enjoy the benefits of free speech, free as-
sembly and the rule of law. Foreign firms have always felt safe
there, which is why Hong Kong is such an important financial
hub. But China’s ruling Communist Party has long yearned to
crush Hong Kong’s culture of protest. Article 22 of the Basic Law
(a kind of mini-constitution) bans Chinese government offices
from interfering in Hong Kong’s internal affairs. That was always
understood to include its Liaison Office in Hong Kong. But on
April 17th the office, China’s main representative body in the ter-
ritory, said it was not bound by Article 22. This suggests that it
plans to step up its campaign to curtail Hong Kong’s freedoms.
Xi Jinping’s incremental power grab in Hong
Kong is one of many. All around the world, auto-
crats and would-be autocrats spy an unprece-
dented opportunity. Covid-19 is an emergency
like no other. Governments need extra tools to
cope with it. No fewer than 84 have enacted
emergency laws vesting extra powers in the ex-
ecutive. In some cases these powers are neces-
sary to fight the pandemic and will be relin-
quished when it is over. But in many cases they are not, and
won’t be. The places most at risk are those where democracy’s
roots are shallow and institutional checks are weak.
Take Hungary, where the prime minister, Viktor Orban, has
been eroding checks and balances for a decade. Under a new
coronavirus law, he can now rule by decree. He has become, in ef-
fect, a dictator, and will remain so until parliament revokes his
new powers. Since it is controlled by his party, that may not be
for a while. Hungary is a member of the European Union, a club
of rich democracies, yet it is acting like Togo or Serbia, whose
leaders have just assumed similar powers on the same pretext.
Everywhere people are scared. Many wish to be led to safety.
Wannabe strongmen are grabbing coercive tools they have al-
ways craved—in order, they say, to protect public health. Large
gatherings can be sources of infection; even the most liberal gov-
ernments are restricting them. Autocrats are delighted to have
such a respectable excuse for banning mass protests, which over
the past year have rocked India, Russia and whole swathes of Af-
rica and Latin America. The pandemic gives a reason to postpone
elections, as in Bolivia, or to press ahead with a vote while the op- some regimes to lose control. For the time being, though, the
position cannot campaign, as in Guinea. Lockdown rules can be
selectively enforced. Azerbaijan’s president openly threatens to
use them to “isolate” the opposition. Relief cash can be selective-
The Economist April 25th 2020
ly distributed. In Togo you need a voter id, which opposition
supporters who boycotted a recent election tend to lack. Minor-
ities can be scapegoated. India’s ruling party is firing up Hindu
support by portraying Muslims as covid-19 vectors.
Fighting the virus requires finding out who is infected, trac-
ing their contacts and quarantining them. That means more in-
vasions of privacy than people would accept in normal times.
Democracies with proper safeguards, like South Korea or Nor-
way, will probably not abuse this power much. Regimes like Chi-
na’s and Russia’s are eagerly deploying high-tech kit to snoop on
practically everyone, and they are not alone. Cambodia’s new
emergency law places no limits on such surveillance.
False information about the disease can be dangerous. Many
regimes are using this truism as an excuse to ban “fake news”, by
which they often mean honest criticism. Peddlers of “falsehood”
in Zimbabwe now face 20 years in prison. The head of a covid-19
committee under Khalifa Haftar, a Libyan warlord, says: “We
consider anyone who criticises to be a traitor.” Jordan, Oman, Ye-
men and the United Arab Emirates have banned print newspa-
pers, claiming that they might transmit the virus.
Judging by what has already been reported, power grabbers
on every continent are exploiting covid-19 to entrench them-
selves. But with journalists and human-rights activists unable to
venture out, nobody knows whether the unre-
ported abuses are worse. How many dissidents
have been jailed for “violating quarantine
rules”? Of the vast sums being mobilised to
tackle the pandemic, how much has been stolen
by strongmen and their flunkeys? A recent
World Bank study found that big inflows of aid
to poor countries coincided with big outflows to
offshore havens with secretive shell companies
and banks—and that was before autocrats started grabbing co-
vid-related emergency powers. Better checks are needed.
“Right now it is health over liberty,” says Thailand’s autocratic
prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha. Yet many of the liberty-con-
stricting actions taken by regimes like his are bad for public
health. Censorship blocks the flow of information, frustrating
an evidence-based response to the virus. It also lets corruption
thrive. Partisan enforcement of social distancing destroys the
trust in government needed if people are to follow the rules.
Cruel, but inept
Where does this lead? Covid-19 will make people poorer, sicker
and angrier. The coronavirus is impervious to propaganda and
the secret police. Even as some leaders exploit the pandemic,
their inability to deal with popular suffering will act against the
myth that they and their regimes are impregnable. In countries
where families are hungry, where baton-happy police enforce
lockdowns and where cronies’ pickings from the abuse of office
dwindle along with the economy, that may eventually cause
traffic is in the other direction. Unscrupulous autocrats are ex-
ploiting the pandemic to do what they always do: grab power at
the expense of the people they govern. 7