Azeri official rules out Ukraine-style revolution
By Lada Yevgrashina
BAKU, Sept 20 (Reuters) – The speaker of Azerbaijan’s parliament told
opposition parties on Tuesday they were wasting their time if they
hoped to turn the ex-Soviet state’s Nov. 6 parliamentary election into
a Ukraine-style revolution.
Opponents of President Ilham Aliyev say if the vote is rigged, huge
crowds of protesters will come out on the streets in an uprising like
the “Orange Revolution” that forced out Ukraine’s ruling elite a year
ago.
Mimicking their Ukrainian counterparts, Azeri opposition parties have
adopted orange as their colour and flew in a pro-democracy activist
from Ukraine to share his experience. He was deported at the weekend.
But Aliyev’s supporters — and many analysts — say a Ukrainian
scenario is unlikely in this Muslim nation of 8 million on the Caspian
Sea.
The ruling elite is buoyed by the petrodollars from its offshore oil
fields while its opponents are divided.
“Our opposition need not bother travelling to Ukraine and bringing
back activists, orange flags and T-shirts,” said parliamentary speaker
and Aliyev supporter Murtuz Aleskerov.
“They need to respect their own Azeri people and the laws of
Azerbaijan,” he said.
The U.S. military is considering setting up temporary bases in
Azerbaijan, which borders Iran and Russia.
BP <BP.L> has invested billions of dollars in Azeri reserves and is
weeks away from loading the first crude from a pipeline that stretches
from Baku to the Turkish Mediterranean coast.
Azerbaijan — ruled for three decades until 2003 by Aliyev’s late
father, Heydar — has yet to stage a vote deemed fair by Western
monitors.
But the Nov. 6 election is under unprecedented international scrutiny
after disputed votes brought thousands onto the streets and propelled
the opposition to power in Ukraine and also ex-Soviet Georgia and
Kyrgyzstan.
“We want to see fundamental changes in the country and if that does
not happen through transparent elections we will do it via peaceful
revolution,” said Namik Seidiyev, a leader of the “New Thinking” youth
group.
His radical group is a clone of Ukraine’s Pora movement that
spearheaded the “Orange Revolution.”
ORANGE TINGE
The mainstream opposition do not openly advocate revolution, but they
too look to Ukraine for inspiration.
At an opposition rally in Baku this month, party leaders wore orange
T-shirts. Days later, police seized a store of tents from one
opposition party office. A protesters’ tent city was a feature of
Ukraine’s revolt.
However, Aliyev supporters say all that is just window dressing to
mask opposition weakness.
For many voters, the main opposition leaders are tainted by having
served in a 1992-1993 government marked by economic chaos and
disastrous setbacks in a war with neighbouring Armenia.
And they are not united. There are two big opposition blocs running in
the election, each made up of several parties. No one has emerged as a
clear leader.
A few thousand people, claiming electoral fraud, demonstrated after
Ilham Aliyev’s victory in a 2003 presidential vote. But the protest
melted away after riot police violently dispersed the crowd and
arrested activists.
“Lacking any worthwhile ideas of its own, (the opposition) is copying
Ukraine’s example,” said Siyavush Novruzov, deputy head of the New
Azerbaijan ruling party. “There are none of the preconditions for that
sort of revolution here,” he said.
09/20/05 13:29 ET