`You Don’t Consider Yourself a King, Do You?’: Euronews to Aliyev

Tert.am
14:55 – 06.02.10

In a recent interview with Euronews, Ilham Aliyev, president of
Azerbaijan, said that Azerbaijan doesn’t interfere in the internal
affairs of European countries, even though there are aspects they
might not like.

This, in the context of a March 2009 change in Azerbaijan’s
constitution which abolished presidential term limits, Euronews noted
that such legislation is not characteristic of democratic societies,
to which Aliyev responded:

`Well, it depends. If you have a king, which is a nominal head of
state, and a prime minister who can be elected five times, it’s not
that different to from what we have here. If you look at the European
countries you will see.’

Asked `You don’t consider yourself as a king, do you?’, Aliyev
responded by saying:

`No, no. I consider myself as the head of the executive branch, which
is, in the case of your countries, the prime minister, who can be
elected many times. So why people should be deprived from this right?
If they have a choice, if they have a chance to choose.’

Continuing, the Azerbaijani president said, `And the democratic
process in Azerbaijan is very active. We do not interfere in the
internal issues of your countries, though there are a lot of things
that we can not like, we can oppose, and we can consider to be
ridiculous. But we never say it.’