Uzbekistan: 3400 illegal decisions were made by officials in 2019

On June 19, Senate Chairman Tanzila Narbaeva became concerned about keeping law and order in the vertical of power at the fifth plenary meeting of the upper house of the Parliament. In 2019, the courts examined 2992 cases on various decisions of the heads of administrations of the city, district and regional levels. “Of these, 1255 were declared illegal,” the speaker said.

Tanzila Narbaeva sees the reason for the problems in the insufficient level of legal knowledge of employees in the government. She stated that “the responsible leaders, working in various structures of the hokimiyats [local administrations], prepared illegal decisions and gave the hokims [heads of local administrations] for signature …”.

The Senate Committee on legal issues and combating corruption examined compliance with the law when signing documents by hokims and concluded that more than 3400 decisions were declared illegal that year. Hokims are adopting large-scale resolutions, for example, on transferring buildings and structures to the balance sheet and allocation of land plots, forced eviction without payment of compensation. All this is done contrary to the law, which doesn’t provide them with such powers.

April resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers aimed at strengthening the rule of law, in which “indicators for monitoring and evaluating measures to improve the legal culture” were developed. Judging by the analysis of the situation by the speaker, the document will not start working soon.

The statement about the competence of lawyers in the administrative apparatus, who see the bureaucratic or corruption essence of the decisions of the leaders, but cannot protest, seems strange.

According to an ACCA expert, the attempt to whitewash the hokims and blame the clerks for the illegal decisions is at least ridiculous.

“The Parliament can say anything about the unlawful acts of the hokims and how to deal with them,” the expert notes. “The situation is such that the main criterion for the work of city and district hokims is their exceptional loyalty to the regional hokim, and the regional hokim to the President. Here, it’s necessary to ensure integrity in fulfilling, first of all, the oral requirements of Mirziyoev.”

On May 11, the Senate of Oliy Majlis sent to the Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov a parliamentary request on the state of compliance with the law when hokims make decisions. The government has not yet responded to its receipt. But on May 19 of this year, at the meeting, the President has threatened all officials that if the property of at least one entrepreneur is seized illegally, the hokim will not get rid of his resignation, but he will answer before the law. So far, none of the threats of detention has become a reality. There are no statistics on initiating criminal cases against hokims.

In December 2017, Mirziyoev made the message to the Parliament for the first time. It was noted that “if one of the employees of a state agency commits an offence, the head will be prosecuted”.

Soon, the Parliament will consider the bill “On the state civil service”. Mirziyoev spoke about its adoption three years ago. The document has been prepared all this time by the Agency for the Development of Civil Service under the President without the involvement of outside experts. As a result, even non-specialists in the field of public administration were surprised by the state’s readiness to forgive officials foreign accounts and real estate abroad.

As ACCA previously wrote, if the law is adopted in its original version, its effect doesn’t apply to the country’s leadership, senior officials and deputies from the untouchable list. The heads of regional administrations are also on this list.