AZERBAIJAN’S PRESIDENT SET FOR EASY RE-ELECTION
The Associated Press
October 8, 2013 Tuesday 12:50 PM GMT
By AIDA SULTANOVA and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press BAKU,
Azerbaijan
Oil-rich Azerbaijan is booming and the wealth is trickling down to
its poorest people. It all means that its president doesn’t even need
to clamp down too hard to ensure he extends a decades-long dynastic
rule in elections this week.
Ilham Aliyev appears to be so certain of his popularity that
his government has magnanimously eased tight restrictions on the
opposition and allowed it to freely convene for rallies in the
center of the capital only to see the events draw tepid crowds of
a few thousand. Aliyev hasn’t even really bothered to campaign for
Wednesday’s election, confident that the cult of personality that
has sprung up around him is sincere.
Aliyev looks and sounds like a Western statesman sporting immaculately
tailored suits and speaking fluent English but he has in the past
shown little tolerance for dissent and extended his rule through
elections criticized by Western observers. At the same time, he has
firmly allied the Shia Muslim nation with the West, helping secure
its energy and security interests and offset Russia’s influence in
the strategic Caspian region.
That strategy has translated into fabulous wealth.
Under Aliyev, the nation of 9 million has basked in oil riches that
have more than tripled its gross domestic product and transformed the
once-gritty capital, Baku, into a shining modern city. The State Oil
Fund that accumulates oil revenues held $34 billion as of the start
of the year.
With his political foes weakened by years of relentless government
pressure and bitter infighting, Aliyev is all but certain to roll
over the main opposition challenger and eight fringe candidates
on Wednesday.
Ali Ahmadov, the executive secretary of the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan
party, said the president doesn’t need to campaign because his frequent
trips across the country have brought him close to the people. “There
is no need for the head of state to engage in propaganda during the
election campaign,” Ahmadov said.
Aliyev’s glamorous wife Mehriban, who is a lawmaker and heads a
charity, has helped his popularity. “She has drawn the sympathy of
many, including some of those who are in opposition,” said Elkhan
Shahinoglu, an independent political analyst.
Aliyev inherited the presidency from his father, Geidar Aliyev, who
had ruled Azerbaijan first as the Communist Party boss and then as
a post-Soviet president for the greater part of three decades. The
son has presented himself as a guarantor of stability, an image that
appeals to many in Azerbaijan, where painful memories are still fresh
of the turmoil that accompanied the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
Soon after the elder Aliyev lost his job in a shakeup of the Communist
elite launched by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Azerbaijan
plunged into an armed conflict with neighboring Armenia over the
disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The six-year war left ethnic
Armenian forces in control of Nagorno-Karabakh and neighboring areas
in Azerbaijan and turned 1 million Azerbaijanis into refugees.
Amid public anger over military defeats, Azerbaijan’s first president,
Ayaz Mutalibov, stepped down and fled the country in 1992. His
successor, Abulfaz Elchibey, was ousted the following year in a
rebellion that paved way for Geidar Aliyev’s triumphant return
to power.
Aliyev senior fully dominated the political scene, and just a few
months before his death secured his son’s victory in an October 2003
presidential election that drew Western observer criticism over massive
violations and triggered violent clashes between protesters and police.
Initially dismissed by foes as a pale shadow of his powerful father,
Ilham Aliyev quickly consolidated his power and stifled dissent. He
was re-elected by a landslide in a 2008 vote boycotted by major
opposition parties and again criticized by Western observers. He then
rammed through a constitutional referendum that scrapped presidential
term limits.
International rights groups have accused him of pressuring and
harassing government critics. Human Rights Watch said in a report
last month that the clampdown on freedom of expression and assembly
had intensified in the months preceding the vote. The government,
however, loosened the reins ahead of the ballot, withdrawing its
long-held ban on rallies in the center of the capital.
While leaving little breathing space for his domestic foes, Aliyev
has expanded energy and security ties with the West, becoming an
indispensable regional partner for the United States and the European
Union.
BP, ExxonMobil and other Western oil giants have invested billions
of dollars to tap Azerbaijan’s oil riches. An oil pipeline backed
by the U.S. and the European Union to pump Azerbaijani crude via
Georgia to Turkey, bypassing Russia, went into operation in 2005,
a pivotal element in a Western strategy to reduce Europe’s dependence
on Russian energy resources.
In the future, Azerbaijan would be a necessary conduit for any
prospective pipelines under the Caspian to carry energy resources
from Central Asian nations to Western markets.
Azerbaijan has further strengthened its relations with the West by
contributing troops to the U.S.-led missions in Afghanistan and Iraq
and serving as a key supply route for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Azerbaijan’s ties with neighboring Iran, which has a sizable ethnic
Azeri community, have grown strained in recent years as Tehran
has become vexed by Azerbaijan’s growing security cooperation with
the United States and Israel. Last year, the Azerbaijani security
agency arrested dozens of people allegedly hired by Iran to carry out
terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israeli embassies as well as
Western-linked groups and companies.
While Aliyev’s foes have compared him to autocratic rulers ousted
by the Arab Spring uprisings and warned that he could face a similar
fate, experts see few parallels between the former Soviet Union and
the developments in the Middle East.
“These are different societies at different levels of development,”
said Irina Zvyagelskaya, a leading expert with Moscow’s Institute of
Oriental Studies. “What happened in the Arab world can’t serve as a
model for the ex-Soviet lands.”
The opposition’s hopes of challenging Aliyev suffered a humiliating
setback when election officials refused to register its original
candidate on the grounds that he had dual Russian and Azerbaijani
citizenship, something explicitly banned by the constitution.
As windfall oil revenues have filtered down to Azerbaijan’s poorest,
the opposition has found it hard to assail the government’s economic
policies, and the main opposition candidate, historian Jamil Hasanli,
focused on government corruption and social inequality.
Gyulnara Samedova, a 47-year-old housewife who watched the debates,
said nobody in her family was impressed by any of the challengers.
“All we heard were mutual accusations and insults, nothing like
a program for the country’s development,” she said. “We will vote
for stability.”
Isachenkov reported from Moscow.
From: Baghdasarian