Azeri Authorities Accused of Wrecking Opposition's Election Chances

Azerbaijan’s main opposition bloc has accused the authorities of deliberately obstructing its efforts to run in next month’s parliamentary election by refusing to approve candidates and depriving it of airtime.

This year, parliament changed the electoral law to cut the official campaigning period to three weeks from 45 days, thus limiting the amount of time opposition candidates can receive free television airtime.

It also halved the period of time that individual candidates have in which to collect the 450 signatures they need to register, saying the change brought Azerbaijan into line with international best practice.

“The authorities seem to fear Musavat-PFPA,” said Isa Qambar, head of the opposition bloc that brings the Musavat party together with the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan, PFPA.

“The aim is to strip us of our free television time. If you take into account that advertising costs are very high, and that the opposition does not have the financial resources of the governing [Yeni Azerbaijan] party, then you can virtually say the opposition has lost the right to campaign.”

According to the amended electoral law, only parties with more than 61 candidates registered in the race for parliament’s 125 seats are entitled to free airtime. Yeni Azerbaijan was the only party that met this requirement, as the Central Election Commission, CEC, approved 112 of the 115 candidates it put forward.

Musavat-PFPA was not so lucky – only 26 of the more than 90 candidates it proposed were officially accepted. Even well-known opposition figures like Arif Hajili, chairman of Musavat’s executive council, and Hasan Kerimov, head of the governing council of the PFPA, failed to meet the election body’s requirements.

Yeni Azerbaijan denies having exploited state resources in gathering signatures for its candidates. Ali Ahmedov, the party’s executive secretary, said all it did was assign ten assistants to every candidate, thus ensuring the barriers to registration were overcome with ease.

He also suggested that Yeni Azerbaijan might renounce its free airtime if the opposition parties did not manage to register enough candidates.

“If we’re the only ones that get the right to free campaigning, then there will be no dialogue, so the need for TV appearances is reduced,” he said.

The election authority has denied manipulating the rules to favour the governing party.

“There are several very well respected candidates who have not been registered. At the same time some opposition candidates have not been registered, either. I do not believe this was done deliberately. To us, all candidates are equal before the law,” CEC chairman Mazahir Panahov, chairman of the Central Election Commission.

In the last parliamentary election five years ago, only five opposition candidates won seats.

That poll was criticised by international observers as falling short of democratic standards. Observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the process for appealing against the election results was also unfair.

Independent analysts say the authorities have a new plan that they hope will avoid such unpleasant criticism.

“Unlike the elections of 2000 and 2005, this time the rules of the game have changed,” said Azer Rashidoglu, head of the Tolerance research centre. “Up to now, most of the decisions have been taken on election day – that is, ballot papers were forged, or the same people voted several times over. Now the authorities have decided to have more or less legitimate voting on election day, because they want a positive assessment from international observers. But at the same time, they are resolving their political problem in advance by excluding undesirable candidates from even the registration process.”

Among ordinary Azerbaijanis meanwhile, the main emotion in the run-up to the vote appears to be apathy.

Naila Mutallimova, a 36-year-old teacher, said she would not be voting at all.

“I learned long ago that my vote means nothing. I don’t know my own representatives. In fact, I wonder whether we need elections at all –it’s just a waste of money,” she said.

Qambar said the government was deliberately trying to encourage a public mood of indifference.

“Yeni Azerbaijan’s decision to turn down free [televised] campaigning is a step in this direction. It would be naïve to imagine they’d show solidarity with us,” he said. “They just don’t feel there’s any need for an electoral struggle or campaign. They don’t want to draw people’s attention to politics of any kind – even to themselves. So they’ve reduced the campaign period to a minimum and are trying to get through the election without violations on the day.”

Zarema Velikhanova works for the navigator.az agency. She is also an IWPR-trained journalist and a member of the Cross Caucasus Journalism Network.