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bne March 2019 Eurasia I 39
security forces engaged in clashes with protesters on March 1-2, 2008.
Kocharyan has denied the accusations. Armenia’s current government is pursuing a political “vendetta” against him, he has said.
He was freed last August 13 by an appeals court that ruled the
constitution gave him immunity from prosecution in connection with the 2008 violence. Subsequently, despite having announced he was returning to politics, he did not run in the snap December 9 parliamentary elections that brought a crushing victory for the Pashinian-led My Step Alliance.
A court reinstated Kocharyan's pretrial
detention two days before the elections. He has been in custody since then.
Pashinian has defended the criminal charges against Kocharyan. He declared last August 17 that “all murderers will go to prison”.
Corruption in Eurasia: Transparency International paints bleak picture of anti-democratic decay
bne IntelliNews
For defenders of democracy the 2018 edition of Transparency Inter- national’s (TI’s) Corruption Percep- tions Index (CPI) makes for unnerving reading, with the bleak picture painted of Eurasia only lightened by the post-revo- lution scenario developing in the small South Caucasian nation of Armenia.
It is a given that a failure to significantly control public sector corruption will expose any country to anti-democratic decay and the CPI 2018 conclusions that were on January 29 issued on Turkey, Central Asia’s “Stans”, Iran, the three South Caucasus nations and Mongolia provide plenty to lose sleep over.
Turkey’s five-year descent
First to Turkey, once seen as a nation at the crossroads of Europe and Asia making clear progress on rights and transparent business that would sooner or later make it a viable candidate for European Union membership. Not any more. The CPI 2018 presented snapshots of the nation of 81mn’s descent that on a five-year view meant it rated several special negative mentions in the publicity material put out with the latest rankings.
Compared to 2017, there was little change in Turkey’s CPI position and
score. For 2018, it was jointly placed 78th with six other nations out of the 180 ranked countries and territories (others given the ranking of 78th included India, Kuwait and Ghana),
an improvement of three places from a year ago. Its points score moved up from 40 to 41 (the used scale of zero to 100
cratic tendencies – score 35; autocratic regimes perform worst, with an average score of just 30 on the CPI.
“Exemplifying this trend, the CPI scores for Hungary and Turkey decreased by eight and nine points respectively over the last five years. At the same time, Tur-
“Azerbaijan’s decline follows a continued crackdown on civil society and independent journalists”
defines zero as “highly corrupt” and 100 as “very clean”). Nevertheless, not so long ago, in 2013 to be precise, Turkey scored 50 points.
In a press release, TI thus described Turkey, along with Hungary – another country under a populist administra- tion with its face set against the liberal democracy model – as in a precarious position, saying: “Cross analysis with global democracy data reveals a link between corruption and the health of democracies. Full democracies score an average of 75 on the CPI; flawed democ- racies score an average of 49; hybrid regimes – which show elements of auto-
key was downgraded from ‘partly free’ to ‘not free’ [by Freedom House], while Hungary registered its lowest score for political rights since the fall of commu- nism in 1989. These ratings reflect the deterioration of rule of law and demo- cratic institutions, as well as a rapidly shrinking space for civil society and independent media, in those countries.”
“With many democratic institutions under threat across the globe – often by leaders with authoritarian or populist tendencies – we need to do more to strengthen checks and balances and protect citizens’ rights,” said Patricia Moreira, managing director of Transpar-
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