The two faces of Azerbaijan and its president

Nov 7th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

European observers have condemned the lack of fairness in the weekend election in Azerbaijan, a rising oil producer in the troubled Caucasus. For all their reformist talk, President Ilham Aliev and his government stand accused of attacking and intimidating opponents. The opposition plans to take its case to the streets

IN THE inscrutable Caucasus, things are rarely what they seem. So it was with the two contradictory election campaigns that were conducted in the run-up to Azerbaijan's parliamentary elections on Sunday November 6th. One campaign involved decrees on electoral propriety from Ilham Aliev, president of the former Soviet republic, the open registration of candidates, plans for exit-polling and the release of political prisoners. Beneath these niceties, however, lay a second, parallel campaign that alarmed foreign election and human-rights observers. This one featured the beating and detention of opposition candidates and their supporters, media bias, and bizarre allegations of a coup plot that followed a mysteriously aborted homecoming by an exiled politician.

So it was hardly surprising that election day itself was, according to the opposition and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, rather less than free and fair. Security forces used excessive force to break up gatherings, and chased away election observers. Heavies at polling stations told voters whom they should vote for, and allegedly bought votes. Ballot boxes were stuffed. Minor problems typical of emerging democracies, said the government, which claimed a big majority with the help of independents and parties affiliated with the ruling New Azerbaijan Party. The opposition is planning a Ukraine-style series of demonstrations to overturn the result, and has optimistically adopted orange as its colour.

Pre-election antics had not augered well for polling day. Last month, the country’s health minister, Ali Ansanov, and economic-development minister, Farhad Aliev, were dismissed and charged, along with other officials, with helping Rasul Guliev, an exiled opposition leader, to organise a supposed coup against Mr Aliev’s government. Mr Guliev, who had been preparing to return home to take part in the elections, was forced to abandon his plans. On November 1st, the government claimed to have found a cache of weapons which were to have been used in the plot; the next day, some of the alleged conspirators were paraded on television to make “confessions”. And two days before the election, the opposition Democratic Party said plain-clothes police had ransacked its headquarters in the capital, Baku, confiscating leaflets and arresting its campaign manager. The interior ministry denied all knowledge of the raid.

Mr Aliev insisted last week that the alleged plotters had intended to seize power and that his government’s actions had averted a possible descent into civil war. Some of his critics suggested that the plot had in fact been fabricated to mask power struggles between the ruling elite’s fractious clans: the president’s father and predecessor as strongman, Haidar Aliev, constantly accused potential rivals of such plots during his three decades in power. Others said the arrests were a signal to opposition groups that any resistance to the Aliev regime was pointless.

So, for all the president’s promises and proclamations, these parliamentary elections are likely to be judged to have been little cleaner than the rigged presidential poll in 2003, when Mr Aliev succeeded his father. But for all the hopes of opposition leaders, emboldened by opposition successes after flawed elections in Ukraine, Georgia and Kirgizstan, the recent actions of Mr Aliev’s security forces show his regime is determined to pre-empt any thoughts of rebellion.

Azerbaijan matters—much more than Georgia, which thanks to its telegenic, English-speaking president, Mikhail Saakashvili, has generally had a higher profile. Azerbaijan has more people (8m), and most are Muslims. It is in a rough neighbourhood: to the north are the anarchic Russian regions of Dagestan and Chechnya; to the south, Iran. Azerbaijan fought a war with neighbouring Armenia in the 1990s, in which it lost the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and the two sides may yet fight another. Above all, it has oil and gas: new pipelines will soon carry both from the Caspian to the Mediterranean.

And, like its election, Azerbaijan has two faces. It is a proud, booming nation with a westernised elite and a glamorous capital; it is also grotesquely corrupt, beset by clan rivalries, its bureaucrats fattening on backhanders while 40% of the country lives in poverty.

The oil, competition with Russia for influence in the former Soviet Union, plus Azerbaijan’s strategic location, might suggest that America and the European Union should be content with Mr Aliev and the stability he seems to offer. But that would be the wrong policy: for the West, for its reputation in the wider Muslim world, and for Azerbaijan itself. The country’s choice may be between allowing more democracy now or facing nastier change in a decade or so, after many of the petrodollars have been squandered. It is too late for this weekend’s flawed election to be undone. But America and the EU could still try, at the least, to pressure the authorities to refrain from violence in the event of demonstrations.

The real test is for Mr Aliev, who is as much of a Caucasian enigma as his country. To westerners, the president talks of tackling corruption, spreading wealth and joining Europe. This Mr Aliev seems to understand that, since power in Azerbaijan mostly resides with the presidency (and his parliamentary party is popular), he has little to gain from a rigged vote, and made a show of trying to rein in unreconstructed election officials and over-zealous police. But the other Mr Aliev is secretly in cahoots with them, denies the existence of flagrant human-rights abuses and cannot overcome a reflexive post-Soviet suspicion of opposition, or the belief that only overwhelming election victories count. It is not enough for him to plead, as sham reformers tend to, that his is a country in transition. The way he handles protests over the elections will be his chance to prove that he can—eventually—become a truly democratic leader, not just a simulacrum.

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