The Messenger, Georgia
June 24 2005
Azerbaijani revolution imminent?
The Messenger, Tbilisi, 24.06.2005 — There is increased speculation
that another velvet revolution may be looming following the recent
demonstrations in Baku, especially if the government fails to hold
parliamentary elections scheduled for November, or the elections are
believed to have been rigged. Can Ilham Aliev’s administration
placate the Azeri people quickly enough or will they fall foul of a
wave of revolutions sweeping across the CIS sphere?
Perhaps realizing the dangers of further destabilization in the
region, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, after openly
supporting the Orange revolution in Ukraine, has remained
conspicuously quiet on the possibilities of revolution in Georgia’s
eastern neighbor. Regime change in Baku could not only potentially
destabilize Azerbaijan, it could potentially lead to renewed
hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia as well.
Nevertheless, with or without the Georgian president’s intervention,
a velvet revolution in Azerbaijan is certainly a possibility. The
current situation is reminiscent of that in Georgia in the run-up to
the November 2, 2003 elections – with an increasingly united
opposition tapping into the growing discontent among ordinary
Azerbaijanis.
The situation also resembles that of Azerbaijan in the run-up to its
2003 elections, just one month before those in Georgia. But in
contrast to Shevardnadze’s government, the Azerbaijani authorities
were able at that time to prevent sporadic demonstrations from
developing into fully-fledged revolution. This year may be different,
not least because of the precedents set in Tbilisi, Kiev and Bishkek,
which have demonstrated to people across the whole post-Soviet space
that corrupt governments that hold onto power through conducting
fraudulent elections can in fact be removed without resort to
bloodshed.
With scheduled elections still six months away, however, Ilham Aliev
is in a position to prevent a velvet revolution from taking place –
the question is how to achieve this. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan offer
two plausible alternatives. While in Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev
is seeking to introduce a number of reforms in an effort to prevent
the sort of revolutionary change seen in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, in
Uzbekistan police reportedly massacred hundreds of protesters in
Andijan last month.
The first sanctioned opposition demonstration in a number of months,
which took place in Baku on June 5, hints that the Azeri
administration may be contemplating pursuing the Kazakh model. It is
uncertain how many people attended the rally – the government claims
that only 3,000 were present while the opposition declared a turnout
of 75,000 – but the fact that the protest took place at all is
encouraging. Then earlier this week a reported 20,000 people, many
wearing orange, held a rally in Baku to call for free and fair
elections. The demonstration was organized by Azadligi, a union of
the People’s Front Reformist Wing, Musavat and Democratic opposition
parties.
The Azeri opposition have laid down an ultimatum that if the murder
of Elham Huseinov, the editor of a local oppositional magazine
Monitoring, is not investigated objectively, if no independent
television channel is created, and if significant changes are not
made to the Electoral Code, then there will be a democratic
revolution in Baku. “We are not fighting for parliamentary seats, but
to return the parliament to the people. If they do not create the
appropriate conditions for fair elections then all of society will
come out and remove this regime,” states Ali Kerimli, the head of the
People’s Front, as quoted by Rezonansi.
The government has so far downplayed the possibility of a revolution
taking place, Chair of the ruling faction Mamed Alizade stating that
there will be no revolution because “about 80-85% of Azerbaijan’s
population supports Ilham Aliev.” If this is indeed the case, then
Aliev obviously has little to worry about. But if opposition support
is in fact stronger, then the administration would do well to begin
introducing reforms quickly. The last elections in Azerbaijan, in
2003, were widely condemned as fraudulent: if the November elections
this year are also perceived to have been rigged by the government,
there is every chance that Azeris will take to the streets to demand
that the president step-down.
Should that happen, it can only be hoped that neither side will
resort to violence, and that events in Baku do not spark region-wide
instability.