Political apathy holds sway in the society. Many in Azerbaijan do not see any point in voting. They believe that the authorities will decide the result anyway. They claim that President Ilham Aliyev and his cronies will, as has been the case at previous elections, rig votes across the country in order to load the new parliament with loyalists. The society at large, lurching into pessimism about the country’s future and increasingly dissatisfied with ineffective governance, is mostly unengaged with the electoral process. With resignation, it appears to accept the authorities. Putting a lid on genuine public debate on issues of wider public interest – be it elections, human rights abuses or even transparency about the oil and gas revenue expenditures, the authorities have effectively managed to discourage meaningful citizen participation in political and decision-making processes.
All this lies at the root of a continuous crisis of confidence in the electoral process and the citizens’ weak belief in their ability to effect change in the country.
Restoring faith in the electoral system is difficult. The ruling regime has intentionally been slow to engage. Public trust in the electoral process remains low. Reports of extensive election irregularities, all within a general culture of impunity and non-accountability, contribute to the crisis of legitimacy that will face the declared winner.
The government, under the reign of the Aliyev family since 1993, escapes broader public accountability thanks to not holding free and fair elections. This has been the case ever since independence, in 1991. The authorities still perceive elections as a threat, not as an opportunity. All past elections have been marred by widespread manipulation by government officials, significant police abuse and other serious malpractices. Time and again, international observers have denounced elections in Azerbaijan for massive fraud and violations of democratic practice.
Despite of the troubled transition from Soviet yoke, Azerbaijan retains its authoritarian legacy, with the Aliyev family dominating both politics and the economy, making any transition impossible. The current president Ilham Aliyev succeeded his father Heydar Aliyev, the country’s long-standing post-soviet ruler, in 2003, a process sealed by government critics as a ‘dynastic succession’, which was the first such power transfer in the whole post-Soviet zone. Following in his father’s footsteps, Ilham Aliyev’s government deepened the President’s authoritarian grip on the country. Under his rule, impunity on the authorities’ side has further increased. So has political repression, including the use of violence. Likewise, elections have continued to fall far short of international norms.
The widespread public apathy towards elections has portrayed itself in a continued decline in turnouts for each election held. There is no lack real competition, no open public debate and no genuine campaigns. At every election, the pre-election fields are almost totally tilted towards the government’s candidates and the media remains under full government control. Less than half the population, 47 %, turned out to vote at the parliamentary elections in 2005. In 2009, the turnout for the municipal elections was well below 30%. In a country which continues to witness one fraudulent election after the other, the clear tendency is a disenchantment with the entire electoral system.
A low voter turnout could be the ruling regime’s only challenge for the coming elections on Monday next week. However, from previous elections, there have been reports of invented and inflated turnouts and of people being forced to vote. There is reason to believe that authorities have routinely forced students, hospital employees, teachers and other vulnerable state employees to vote for the government’s candidates.
From bad to worse
Internationally, Azerbaijan’s steady drop in international freedom indexes since 2003, is a cause of great concern. Political space for alternative voices has continued to shrink with the considerable restriction of freedom of expression and assembly in the past seven years. Public assemblies are in effect banned. The government controls close to all influential media. Journalists expressing critical opinions often become targets of persecution by the authorities, using defamation, accusations of drug possession, and hooliganism. Journalists also risk being arrested on politically motivated charges. Some have been sentenced to several years’ imprisonment These facts have been stated in the report of the Commissioner of Human Rights to Council of Europe, Thomas Hammarberg. The United Nations’ Human Rights Committee, the United Nations’ Committee Against Torture, the Parliamentary Assembly and the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have all stated that journalists and human rights defenders are consistently subjected to harassment and beatings, and that this ill-treatment is rarely investigated.
As Azerbaijan’s oil revenue has steadily increased, the human rights situation has deteriorated, especially during Ilham Aliyev’s presidency since 2003. While the Aliyev administration has worked hard to raise its international image as a reliable energy exporter and generally a stable partner, its democratic credentials have dropped and human rights have increasingly come under threat. Prospering from the oil income, Aliyev’s government has taken Azerbaijan ever further away from democracy. The constitutional amendments of March 2009 opened the possibility of life-long presidency for Ilham Aliyev. Citing the gradual degradation, an Azeri analyst says the country is on its way ‘to transform itself to a Central Asia style dictatorship, like Turkmenistan, which seems a role model for Azerbaijan’s leadership’.
The traditional opposition boycotted the 2008 poll that secured a second term for President Aliyev. In order to protest the restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly and the pro-government dominance in the election commissions, the 2009 referendum on controversial constitutional changes were also boycotted by the opposition. Adding to the challenge comes the general polarization of politics, with a near total absence of dialogue between the President and the opposition.
The oil-boom has boosted the President’s confidence to a point where he shuns international criticism and ensures domestic political control by any means. Hence, the political opposition and outspoken media face tremendous challenges under Ilham Aliyev, who is now being seen as more hostile and intolerant towards criticism than his father. In fact, many dissidents and radical opposition activists look back on Heydar Aliyev’s reign ‘as a golden age of freedom’. For instance, while opposition parties were able to hold rallies and public meetings in central parts of the capital Baku during father Aliyev’s reign (1993-2003), this is now a distant dream. According to a statement on 27 September 2010 from the Azerbaijani members of the South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders, the number of illegal state interferences with educational and other events conducted by civil society institutions in the regions has increased in the run-up to the 2010 elections.
Azerbaijan’s ruling elite seems driven by one overwhelming motive: self-enrichment. Access to state funds, including through plundering budgetary allocations, competition to misappropriate substantial funds skimming from the lucrative oil business, controlling multi-million dollar construction projects of questionable necessity are all key sources of enrichment. It is no coincidence that the country’s top wealthiest people are all in the higher ranks of the government.
Government critics accuse the authorities of misusing oil revenues for their own political and economic interests. Manipulating the Oil Fund and state budget to support high-priced construction projects is seen as a tool for the financial gain of the country’s elite. Such projects do not generally serve the people’s interests. Overall, Azerbaijan’s oil-derived wealth has failed to translate into better lives of citizens. Some constitutional and legal reforms have been adopted, but they have mostly been decorative, self-serving, tentative or the exception to the general experience.
Meanwhile, Aliyev regime’s increasingly repressive policies have deepened dissatisfaction and contributed to social unrest. While his administration has maintained a certain degree of stability in the country, this has mostly been achieved through a total crackdown on the political opposition, a stifling of the independent and outspoken media, and a curbing also of other fundamental freedoms. Though an impression of stability exists in the country, the potential for a political crisis is growing as the country slides towards an ever more closed and authoritarian rule.
A puppet body: The Central Election Commission
The overall responsibility for how the elections are conducted in the country rests with the Central Election Commission (CEC). However, to favour the incumbent, the authorities have effectively stacked this commission with its supporters.
Every other year, when elections recur, the chairman of CEC, Mazahir Panahov, routinely provides lip service to the regime, insisting that the elections will be free and fair. Panahov’s credibility is in doubt, however, by the simple fact that he has held this position for ten years. In his time in charge, Azerbaijan’s elections have been marred by serious fraud. From the authorities’ point of view, this makes Panahov “the right man for the job”. It is unlikely that he will be replaced. Among opposition and civil society groups it is widely believed that President Aliyev is even using the CEC – and that the CEC is allowing itself to be used – to organize unfair elections that allow his government to stay in power. The unresolved discord between the government and the opposition parties over the CEC’s composition and the obvious bias in favor of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) adds to the credibility challenge. The biased composition of the CEC has effectively shut out the political opposition from decision-making processes affecting elections, such as the registration of candidates. Because the CEC is not independent, it cannot resist the constant interference in the electoral process of officials, above all from the Presidential Administration.
With loose political consensus, the CEC has been hastily formed. As a ballot organizing body, it always lacks full public confidence in its integrity. Musavat, the country’s major opposition party, refused to send its representative to the CEC as a protest to the existing rules of composition of election commissions.
However, not all the serious frauds and abuses happen in the CEC itself. Before the protocols from lower election commissions arrive in the CEC, local authorities – be it law-enforcement bodies, municipality officials, executive committee employees – are always cautiously tamed to ensure the required result. Governors of districts are always under huge pressure to ensure this, as the failure means loss of livelihood or maybe worse. For instance, shortly after the 2005 parliamentary elections, wherever the opposition’s candidates won, either the results were annulled or the governors of those districts were sacked. In the worst cases, both happened. That is to say, the big bosses in Presidential Administration in Baku simply punished the governors of Zakatala, Sabirabad, Surakhani Districts, as they failed to successfully and better rig the votes to thwart the opposition candidates’ victories.
Azerbaijanis have been lead to believe that their job security depends on the Aliyev regime’s continued rule. Even so, unemployment rates have been on the rise for years. Such is the state of fear that public sector employees tend to do whatever their leaders order, just for the sake of keeping their jobs. The precinct election commissions (PECs) often consists of teachers, since the polling stations are usually situated in schools. The teachers are a particularly vulnerable group, with low salaries and employed (so easily dismissible) by the local state administration.
Election run-up: Not free and fair
Most of the violations observed in previous elections are recurring with the same intensity, even with more restricted registration and campaign environment, in the run-up to the current elections.
Fearing a loss in the oil revenue, the authorities will be disinclined to allow a clean vote for the coming elections to the country’s 125 seat Parliament. Though the Election Code has been amended several times with additional so-called safeguards against fraud, the ruling elite is unwilling to embrace genuine democracy or representative elections. The same people who presided over the previous falsified elections are likely to be present this time around as well. The newly amended election legislation and other arrangements could make it harder for some prior malpractices to reoccur, but the details of the revised legislation are less important than its implementation. For instance, installing hundreds of webcams in constituencies to monitor the poll, critics say, are in fact used to intimidate people, mainly in rural areas, as people there think they are being watched by the webcams. Without a political will to hold transparent elections, there is no use for such modern technology.
Credible reports suggest that ordinary voters and candidates have been intimidated during the pre-election period and that the government has successfully prevented the opposition from getting its message across to much of the nation. According to the media monitoring in the pre-election time, carried out by the Institute of Reporters´ Freedom and Safety and Media Rights Institute, election-related news items only covered meetings of the Central Election Commission and events held by international watchdogs. There were no discussion or debate programs about the elections. The ruling New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) Chairman, and President Ilham Aliyev received much positive coverage, while activity by opposition parties / politicians or independent candidates was not broadcasted. The monitoring also showed that the radio coverage was no better in terms of balance than what was shown on TV. In sum, biased media and negative PR against the opposition continues to heavily distort the climate. Compared to previous elections, there is less opportunity this time around for any party or group to express dissent.
Once again, the registration of candidates has been a difficult process, due to an overly restrictive interpretation of the Election Code’s provisions. CEC arbitrarily disqualified several independent and opposition candidates on controversial grounds, which were mainly politically-motivated and not persuasive. The OSCE/ODIHR observers’ mission stated that, “the environment in which candidates were collecting supporting signatures was negatively affected by intimidation of voters and candidates”, as the authorities extensively used threats directly towards the candidates or to their families and relatives. Dealing with unwanted candidates, the Constituency Election Commissions (ConECs) attempted to deregister those candidates to avoid the need for significant malpractices on Election Day. The OSCE/ODIHR mission also found credible reports regarding “intimidation of and pressure on voters to sign or withdrew their signatures from signature sheets”. Current violations of the electoral rights stem from the government’s long-term efforts to stifle dissent and restrict pluralism and its poor record on accountability for abuse.
Though the international community has expressed its commitment to free and fair elections with the deployment of international observers and spending significant money on technical improvements of the elections, the Azerbaijan government seems determined to rig the elections and effectively obstruct the political opposition in order to reconfirm the ruling party’s dominance, at any cost. The parliament, stacked with MPs who have little or no public support and have been elected illegally, cannot hold the executive accountable and will most likely only do rubber-stamp changes to the Constitution.
Written by Vugar GOJAYEV, manager for the Azerbaijan Human Rights House. Gojayev is also a freelance analyst writing on the developments in the South Caucasus region. This article has been written for www.humanrightshouse.org
Additional information:
Article analysing the freedom of expression situation in Azerbaijan
