Deep causes of scandals in the Ministry of Culture

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- It became known about the second case of arrest of high officials of the Ministry of Culture, in general, three officials of this state department are now behind bars. For a small ministry with limited budget funds, three arrests are a significant event. Can you tell me why these people were detained, what did they do?

- This is not the first case of arrests by the Ministry of Culture, employees of the State Security Service. In May 2020, the previous Deputy Minister Rafik Bayramov, who was sitting in the same office, was arrested, and Zakir Sultanov, the head of the State Service for the Protection, Development and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, was arrested along with him. This was the first sign for officials who, abusing official powers, committed malfeasance. According to normal logic, the arrests were supposed to put an end to corruption in the cultural system. According to the information I have, on November 1, the First Deputy Minister Elnur Aliyev, the head of the Department for Provision and Property Management of the Ministry Ilkin Nasibov and an employee of the protocol service Kamil Rzayev were detained.

It is difficult now to answer the question of what they were doing and why they were detained, since we do not have the right to say anything about a person who has not been charged and it would also be wrong to evaluate his detention.

I can say that in general, the ministry did not look like a single center for managing and implementing the cultural policy of the state. The new leadership of the ministry was distinguished by disunity, and such a "split" existed both between individual structures and departments of the ministry, and between the ministry and professional organizations, public associations.

At the same time, the Ministry of Culture still does not have a clear action plan, there is not a single sectoral state program in the structure of the Ministry of Culture. Instead, management deals with the ethics and appearance of employees, introduces clothing standards (skirt length and lipstick color), etc. and were engaged in other developments such as the standards of "cultural behavior", "national dress", etc., which at the moment cannot be a priority.

- How corrupt is the ministry if three high-ranking officials are behind bars?

- 15 years ago, when I worked at Transparency International, we had a complaints hotline, where citizens both openly and anonymously told about facts of corruption and bribery, as well as other malfeasance in state bodies. According to statistics, the Ministry of Culture was the most non-corrupt department. For several years of the implementation of the legal aid project, there were no appeals regarding corruption in the field of culture. I do not know what has happened over the years, but it is clear that the most innovative department, which is obliged to ensure the enrichment of cultural heritage, has completely discredited itself. And today it will be very difficult to restore trust ...

Again, it is difficult to talk about the corruption of the ministry or the three detained officials, because there is no indictment. But since they were detained by the State Security Service, it means that the crimes they commit are really serious.

We must think about how to make the management of culture more transparent, how to ensure that citizens are satisfied with the results of the activities of the cultural department. Indeed, over the past 5 years, these detentions have led to a loss of public confidence in the Ministry of Culture. Along with this, there is a very big discontent among the creative intelligentsia.

- You said in our correspondence that the ministry has big responsibilities and a lot of work, but something is stopping them.  The talk is about “Asan Hidmet” (Asan Service - easy service). Please clarify what you mean.

- The Ministry of Culture has very big responsibilities and an extremely important mission. I participated in the development of the Law on Culture, I proposed many innovations in the Law on Culture. In principle, the law is a fairly modern document, which, if properly implemented and properly managed, can lead to the development of cultural industries and services, can ensure the sustainable development of the cultural sector, turn culture into a profitable sector of the economy, create favorable conditions for investment and thus reduce dependence areas from the state budget. But, to my regret, we faced inaction and inactivity of the ministry. It plays a big role in enriching and preserving, popularizing the cultural heritage of the people, all living in the territory of Azerbaijan.

On the one hand, officials are probably hindered by the lack of understanding of their mission, and on the other, by legal and bureaucratic obstacles, which, in principle, can be eliminated. I have repeatedly applied with conceptual proposals to the ministry, to the head of the department for humanitarian policy, diaspora issues, multiculturalism and religion of the Administration of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. My conceptual proposals were submitted to the Minister, but the Minister of Culture, a year ago, noted that there are no problems in the Ministry and in the culture sector in general, they work smoothly and there are no reasons for concern. But, as the detentions show, there are still fundamental problems.

Regarding the representation of the ministry in the ASAN Service, I want to say that there are many services that the Ministry of Culture provides, and they need to be reformed, simplified and more dynamic management (decision-making). Some of them, of course, could be presented in the ASAN service. For example, issuing permits for filming, etc.