AZERBAIJAN: HAS GOVERNMENT TAKEN A TROUBLING EXAMPLE FROM ANDIJON?
By Richard Giragosian

Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic
Sept 23 2005

As campaigning for the 6 November parliamentary elections gets
under way, the Azerbaijani authorities are directing their efforts
toward ensuring that the ruling Yeni Azerbaycan Party, together with
ostensibly independent but loyal candidates, retains control of the new
parliament. While such efforts are not unexpected in light of previous
tainted elections, the Azerbaijani government’s blatant disregard
for the international community’s insistence on electoral fairness
and transparency is surprising. Moreover, this apparent disdain for
world public opinion is at odds with — and signals a retreat from —
initial moves apparently aimed at reversing the country’s record of
election “illegalities.”

In mid-May, President Ilham Aliyev issued a decree warning election
officials and local councils against any voting irregularities. The
decree also tasked local election officials with compiling accurate
and updated voter lists, set forth procedures for uniform exits polls,
and made provision for all candidates to have equal access to state
run media.

Just a few weeks later, however, in late June, the parliament adopted
numerous minor amendments to the election law that failed to include
a number of the most significant recommendations of the Council of
Europe’s Venice Commission. Those changes, which opposition parties,
too, deemed indispensable to ensuring a fair and democratic election,
ranged from greater opposition representation on electoral commissions
to the use of indelible ink to mark voters’ fingers in a bid to
prevent multiple voting.

The Crackdown Begins The passage of half-hearted electoral reforms
was soon eclipsed by much more disturbing events, however. Starting
in early August, the country’s already embattled political opposition
was targeted in a new campaign of intimidation and innuendo. Ruslan
Bashirli, chairman of the opposition youth movement Yeni Fikir (New
Thinking), was arrested, charged with conspiring to overthrow the
government and, for good measure, accused of accepting money from an
unlikely combination of Armenian intelligence officers and American
nongovernmental organizations. The case also implicated Azerbaijan
Popular Front Party (AHCP) Chairman Ali Kerimli by charging that
Bashirli was acting on Kerimli’s behalf.

Perhaps fearful of the Ukrainian example of the potential power of
a youth movement, the Azerbaijani authorities arrested Yeni Fikir
deputy head Said Nuri and another of the organization’s leaders in
September on similar treason charges. Those arrests were followed
by a raid on the offices of the AHCP during which police “seized”
three grenades and an undisclosed amount of explosives in a room used
by the Yeni Fikir movement. Then, on 15 September, a special team of
security officers from the Azerbaijani Border Service and National
Security Ministry arrested Serhiy Yevtushenko — an activist of the
opposition Ukrainian youth movement Pora — at the Baku airport and
interrogated and later expelled him. Yevtushenko had been invited to
Baku by the opposition Azadlyg bloc, of which the AHCP is a member,
to attend a conference on democratization.In mid-May, President Ilham
Aliyev issued a decree warning election officials and local councils
against any voting irregularities.

In a more imaginative move, some recent Azerbaijani media reports
also “reported” that opposition Musavat party Chairman Isa Gambar
recently met with an Armenian intelligence operative to discuss plans
to disrupt the election. The most amusing aspect of that report was
the contention that Gambar was able to meet freely with the Armenian
during a visit to Turkey, not a country known for permitting Armenian
intelligence such freedom of action.

Bold Tactics Such actions on the part of the Azerbaijani government
so close to the election raise several questions as to Baku’s motives
for such outright disregard for international opinion and, even more
confusing, why the Aliyev administration assumes that it has far less
to lose by adopting such confrontational tactics. Such actions also
give grounds for serious concern over the actual conduct of the voting
and the possibility of a repeat of the postelection violence that
erupted in Baku after the flawed presidential ballot of October 2003.

One factor driving the Azerbaijani government’s disregard for
international reaction to its tactics over the past six weeks may be
its inferences from Western — specifically the U.S. — response to
two other developments.

The first test case for Azerbaijan was what Baku perceived to be the
lukewarm Western reaction to the May unrest in Uzbekistan. Not only
did Uzbek President Islam Karimov’s bloody response to the violent
events in the southeastern town of Andijon, his government’s dubious
definition of the events as an uprising by Islamic extremists, and
the repressive handling of the victims and witnesses not result in
international sanctions, most importantly, the Uzbek case was a direct
and blatant challenge to U.S. credibility.

The second key development was Washington’s praise for Egypt’s
presidential election earlier this month. That praise may have been
construed in Baku as signaling that the United States would be content
with even the most modest progress toward greater democracy.The first
test case for Azerbaijan was what Baku perceived to be the lukewarm
Western reaction to the May unrest in Uzbekistan.

Moreover, for a presidential republic like Azerbaijan, which remains
as much a one-family state as a one-party state, the test for its
November parliamentary election will be limited to the conduct,
and not the outcome, of the poll. (By contrast, the role of the
parliament in Azerbaijan is almost cosmetic.) Thus, assuming that
the Azerbaijani authorities are acting in line with a carefully
crafted strategy, they may be assuming they have wide latitude to
ensure a victory for the pro-government majority, albeit allowing
for greater opposition representation than before, perhaps in line
with the prognosis by Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
rapporteur Andreas Gross, who calculated that the opposition is capable
of winning at least 25 of the 125 seats. If the Egyptian case is any
indication, such an outcome — which would be a marked improvement
over previous Azerbaijani elections — might induce Washington to
overlook violations in the preelection campaign and deliver an overall
favorable assessment.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress