Headline Diplomat eJournal – Issue 1, Series 2
The perilous lenses of COVID-19: The sociopolitical impact
Vassilia Orfanou, Editor in Chief, and Charles Thomas, Content Writer, Headline Diplomat eJournal, LUDCI.eu
From the US, Brazil, Peru, to Mexico; from UK, Spain, Italy, China, India, Nigeria, to South Africa, countries caught up in this pandemic web have had staggering sociopolitical scandals and irregularities in the last six months while still suffering from the jolts of a sudden outbreak.
Aid procurement infractions, irregular aid distribution, overpriced drugs, and kits, widening inequalities, misinformation, lack of transparency, and totalitarian regulations are just some cases of illegal practices by world governments in the management of a global pandemic that has not yet found an effective vaccine. This has alarmed international authorities, governments, political experts, citizens in lockdowns, and those in quarantine.
Before the pandemic, about 10 to 25% of the value of public contracts is said to be lost annually to corruption and lack of transparency, according to the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime. However, this number has multiplied over the months since the outbreak.
In Brazil, for instance, there have emerged reports of how the sitting government chooses companies to buy medical supplies from. While competitors were bidding to supply surgical masks at a significantly lesser price, the Brazilian government decided to award the contract to a supplying company known as Farma Supply with no-bid and without any experience. The company charges close to 12 times than the market valuation, which equals 67% more than a competing bidder from the Ministry of health. According to Transparency International, the company has close relationships with the country’s President Jair Bolsonaro.
In Germany, there are allegations of corruption regarding the distribution of testing kits, according to Berlin.de, a news portal from the country’s capital. According to the report, individuals reported as fraudsters have been seeing disguising as health officials, going from door to door, distributing SARS-Cov-2 test kits. Issues of transparency and corruption also reflect in the number of procured relief loans in Africa, creating an existing lapse in proper health management and kit, and equipment procurement.
Recently, official creditors, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), released a total of $57bn loan to Africa for the management of the crisis, according to The Vanguard. The IMF has a $1tn borrowing capacity. But it has made $250bn of that available to member countries, and some of the highest beneficiaries of that are sub-Saharan African countries. The two organizations, in a joint statement released during a virtual meeting with African leaders, said together, official creditors have mobilized up to $57 billion for Africa in 2020 alone including upwards of $18 billion from the IMF and the World Bank each to provide front-line health services, support the poor and vulnerable, and keep economies afloat in the face of the worst global economic downturn since the 1930s.
According to the statement, additional supports from private creditors could amount to an estimated $13 billion. However, according to the Premium Times, back in March, Nigeria’s Central Bank (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele announced the release of an intervention fund to the tune of N50 billion ($132 million) to assist households and MSMEs in mitigating the pandemic’s effects.
Disbursement started in May. Meanwhile, according to a report by All Africa, an online Afrocentric website, barely four weeks after this begun, a director of the country’s Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), Akeem Lawal, reported the alleged diversion of “COVID-19 logistics and contingency emergency funds into personal accounts.” According to the report, Mr. Lawal said that there were allegations of fraud by some participating public institutions in the release and distribution of grains from strategic food reserves to “financially exploit local governments.”
On its part, according to New 24, South Africa, with more than half a million of coronavirus cases, also recently announced that it is investigating corruption allegations involving R500 billion ($26 billion) relief fund that was allocated by the ANC-led government.
This was announced by the spokesperson for the Special Investigation Unit, Kaizer Kganyago. According to him, the HSACF [Health Sector Anti-Corruption Forum] has prioritized all allegations of fraud and corruption related to COVID-19. He further revealed that “there are currently 45 health sector-related cases that are at an advance stage of investigation by the Directorate for Priority Crime and Investigations.”
While sidelined funds meant for humanitarian relief, medical equipment, and kit procurement, and the provision of health services ends up in the hands of the elites, the less-privileged are bearing most of the brunt.
In Peru, healthcare in hospitals that have the capacity was inaccessible to the low-income Peruvian. There were shortages of supplies, most notably in regions with a weak healthcare system before the outbreak, according to Dr. Ruben Mayorga, the representative of the Pan American Health Organization in Peru.
According to him, there are “multiple providers of services and insurance [including private institutions]” but “a high degree of overlap and little coordination.” Private hospitals were charging up to $3,000 per day for coronavirus care, according to Devex.
However, the government has failed to introduce any form of subsidy for COVID-19-related healthcare, despite getting approval for funds of up to $11bn from the IMF for COVID-19 management. Subsidies were only provided for employers of labor, as reported by KPMG. The government even allowed companies to suspend their workers for up to three months with no salaries, according to The Business Human Rights.
Theories of cover-ups and propaganda
Then the rest of the world has been furious at the Chinese government for the outbreak, its inertia, cover-ups, and propaganda, which would later cause the rest of the world to be cut unawares.
If it is true that it was hard to stop the virus, the rest of the world expected the Far East to have rightly informed by being transparent. Instead, the republic has been alleged to have falsified the numbers of casualties. France President, Emmanuel Macron, had warned the world not to be “naive” about China and not to trust its statistics on casualties.
“Given these differences, the choices made and what China is today, which I respect, let’s not be so naive as to say it’s been much better at handling this,” Emmanuel Macron told the Financial Times. “We don’t know. There are clearly things that have happened that we don’t know about.”
The epicenter of the outbreak in China, Wuhan, had initially announced a death toll of 2,579 people. However, after several censures and exposés on how China has been downplaying the severity of the virus, the Chinese city added a toll of 1,290 people, raising the death toll by 50% in April, bringing the number up to 3,869, according to the BBC.
After the additional figures were announced, the spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, however, told reporters in an interview that “there’s never been any cover-up, and we will never authorise any cover-up.” As quoted by The Guardian, Zhao explained that “medical workers at some facilities might have been preoccupied with saving lives and there existed delayed reporting, underreporting or misreporting.”
However, the White House received a classified U.S. intelligence from secret agents, which reaffirmed that China intentionally underreported the number of cases. Two of the three agents were reported by Fortune to have concluded that the figures being dished out by China were “fake.”
The militarisation of democracies
The measures deployed by world governments in the face of the pandemic are also testing the foundations of democracy, dealing a blow on liberalism and human rights. Several governments have mobilised the military on the streets as a measure to curb the coronavirus. Military forces are patrolling cities in various countries of the world, from the US to India, from sub-Saharan Africa to the northern hemisphere.
Indonesia, for instance, has been witnessing what is called a “partial militarisation.” According to The Jakarta Post, at the national level of government, “about two dozen retired and active-duty officers are in key government positions—some of which are salient to COVID-19 management.”
In some, different levels of state of emergency are declared that limit the freedoms of movement and assembly. While, in others, the State tracks the movements of infected citizens through their mobile phones, as reported by the Business Insider. This could, however, lead to permanent and increased surveillance. While this may help in managing the virus, there are concerns about eroding civil liberties. Countries like South Korea are taking it to another level by putting in public places maps of captured data.
A text which The Guardian reports reads: “A woman in her 60s has just tested positive. Click on the link for the places she visited before she was hospitalised.” Clicking the website takes users to a list of places the patient had gone to before testing positive to the virus.
In a few weeks, things went from massive demonstrations in various parts of the world (Hong Kong, Iraq, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, and Lebanon, among others) to empty streets guarded by police, national guards, and armies.
The military presence is logical if, as almost all the rulers affirm, this crisis is “a war,” as if it were a matter of confronting a state or an insurgent group.
The coronavirus seems tailor-made for the authoritarian governments and politicians that have increased in recent years, according to the NYTimes. While several of them did not initially believe in its seriousness, it has served to cut democratic freedoms, give renewed roles to the military, and close the borders to migration.
“We could have a parallel epidemic of authoritarian and repressive measures following close if not on the heels of a health epidemic,” warns Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights.
As scientists race against time to conjure up a vaccine amid growing numbers of the infected, legal experts and political scientists wonder if the measures that many governments are taking are legal. They are asking what their limits are and if they will be repealed in the future.
The COVID-19 coincides with the global trend that is shifting towards having fewer democracies. Since 2006, according to the Freedom House Institute, 64 countries are less democratic, while only 37 enjoy more freedoms. The presence of military personnel doing civilian tasks raises concerns, especially in countries where they have had or have control and influence over political power.
In South Africa, a country whose adult citizens still have fresh memories of apartheid, the return of the military means and foments trouble.
As can be seen in this video, several hundreds, including the homeless, have been arrested by the military in recent months for the flouting of regulations on isolation.
Abuses by the military and police have also been reported in the Philippines, India, Kenya, during citizen control operations when it was established that people should not leave their homes.
Human Rights Watch has warned of the danger of authoritarians trying to seize power by taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a report by its Executive Director, Kenneth Roth, it also warns that authoritarianism in various countries may restrict the human rights of populations.
In states with strong institutional weaknesses, putting the armed forces in control of the ministries of health, the production of medicines, and citizen security can lead to circumstantial situations becoming permanent. Much more when it is not known when it will be possible to return to normality.
This, Roth warned of, by saying, “the health crisis will inevitably subside, but autocratic governments’ dangerous expansion of power may be one of the pandemic’s most enduring legacies.”
Conclusion:
The truth is that the coronavirus will die out soon, but not the corruption, its devastations, and abnormalities. The public must ensure the implementation of transparency mechanisms that guarantee permanent vigilance on public actions. Finally, the presence of the armed forces in civilian issues is raising concerns about the permanent militarisation of countries’ democracies, post-COVID-19.
Featured photo by cottonbro, Pexels
