Principle of Personal Loyalty Dominates in Personnel Policy of Authorities - Azer Gasimli

Baku / 14.05.20 / Turan: The recent arrests of district heads on charges of corruption are an indicator of the fallacy of the personnel policy, as well as the deficiency of the public administration system. This opinion was expressed in an interview to the Voice of America by the opposition politician Azer Gasimli.

The management system itself is built on corruption. In addition, the staff themselves do not correspond to the position. When they were appointed, the principles of justice, competence, and professionalism were violated. In addition, many of them were appointed for bribes.

 When selecting personnel, the principle of personal loyalty is a priority, and the management system itself has come from the past, it is an undemocratic, not transparent system. Therefore, the result is logical,” Gasimli said.

For real reforms it is necessary to move to the model of "small government". It is also necessary to change the administrative-territorial division in the direction of enlargement and reduction of the number of local authorities, reduction of their powers. “At the same time, it is important to expand the powers of municipalities. At the same time, it is necessary to conduct transparent, democratic municipal elections,” he said.

The leading cadres themselves must be modern and consistent with the philosophy of the 21st century.

According to Gasimli, the effectiveness of the public administration system after reforming the presidential administration and the Cabinet of Ministers at the end of 2019 did not increase. “It was an imitation of reforms and it all came down to a change of officials,” Gasimli said.

The mechanical reorganization of ministries, departments, departments of the presidential administration and the Cabinet of Ministers does not mean reform. We must move on to a model of a small, but mobile and flexible government.

If we are talking about the transition of Azerbaijan to the classical presidential republic, then the need for the Cabinet of Ministers disappears, its functions are transferred to the presidential administration and the head of state becomes responsible for all areas. There is no parliamentary republic in Azerbaijan, where the Cabinet has the powers of the executive body.

There is neither one nor the other model in the country, which is why state administration is ineffective, there are a lot of duplicate structures for the maintenance of which large budget funds are spent.

Touching upon the change of the prosecutor general, Gasimly said that he did not expect anything new. They simply changed the leadership, there are no real reforms in the prosecutor’s office and the head of the department still depends on political power, Gasimli said. -16D06-