Azerbaijan Elections

November 3, 2005 3:08 AM

Azerbaijan is a secular former Soviet state with a rocky past, but this week they are moving towards democracy in an election on November 6th. Bloggers headed to the area are covering the upcoming election and documenting it all.
posted by mathowie (9 comments total)

(mefi user k8t is one of the photographers headed there)
posted by mathowie at 3:09 AM on November 3, 2005

not sure it applies really to azerbaijan, but i thought this article provides some context into post-soviet politics wrt FSS :D btw here's also opendemocracy's caucasus coverage!
posted by kliuless at 4:22 AM on November 3, 2005

oh and from registan's pingback here's an oped providing more context on the azerbaijan elections... but what effect will it have on armenia?
posted by kliuless at 4:37 AM on November 3, 2005

For those who are interested, there appear to be over 1000 LiveJournal members who are in Azerbaijan.

LiveJournal is extremely popular in Russia (230K+ users) and the former Soviet states, probably because many of its earliest open source developers before the site went corporate were Russian. While internet access in Azerbaijan is limited, the latest raw LJ stats show 2204 users. Probably half of those are asshats who think that having Azerbaijan in their bio is amusing or cool, but there are some pearls if you're willing to strain out the dreck.

For those interested in reading journals from Azerbaijan, but who don't have the ability to search LiveJournal's database to see all the latest posts from that country, I would recommend checking out Azerbaijani communities, such as aze or bakucity. It might help to have an online Russian translator to read and interact with them, however.

Here's a translated version of both the Aze and the BakuCity communities, for those interested. There are several nice pictures of the country there, too.
posted by insomnia_lj at 5:15 AM on November 3, 2005

It is really too bad that the words "election" and "erection" look so darn much alike...'cuz once the brain does a little switch accidently, it never stops...

And, however amusing this will make most any sentence, it makes it hard to follow the news during any country's erection year.
posted by HuronBob at 5:45 AM on November 3, 2005

Heh! Ukraine and Georgia needed revolutions, yet Azerbaijan is moving towards democracy? No, I'm afraid I don't buy that at all. Aliyev is not only comparable (including a shared inclination to murder opposing journalists) but worse than Kuchma in many ways (such as depending on his daddy's Stalinesque cult of personality). What does indeed seem to be happenning is that both the US and Russia are quite happy with the deals they made with Aliyev Jr and thus there's little concern over the not really exemplary human rights conditions in Azerbaijan, from any side. As some in the Russian Press point out:

The Azerbaijani government is receiving the support of Moscow and the West in return for its partial fulfillment of various demands, and Azeri President Ilham Aliev has obvious defeated the opposition for now in this oil-rich country.

So this, is Azeri government apologetics. Pure and simple.

The whole area is an arena of Great Game geopolitics, and this article might provide an indication of the byzantine twists and turns of Azeri politics, which can be described in many ways, but "moving towards democracy" is very probably not one of them.

Ironically, and quite revealingly, previous coloured revolutionaries (the fate of whom deserves a post at some point), are for Aliyev and against the "orange" opposition.
posted by talos at 5:54 AM on November 3, 2005

I can't speak for Azerbaijan, but I know that the 2000 US election was actually really good for the democratic process in Armenia.

The set up to the situation was strait out of the playbook of dictatorial regimes:

Gore: second most powerful man, winner of the popular vote

Bush: winner only through a contested vote in a province controlled by his own brother...

When Gore actually stepped aside and no shots were fired, no military coup ensued, none of your usual fussin' and feudin', the Armenians were watching.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:03 AM on November 3, 2005

I agree with talos: I'll be extremely surprised if Aliev permits anything resembling a free election. And kliuless's oped link is a grim reminder of the slave mentality of today's average government bureaucrat ("Elizabeth Jones was assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs 2001-2005 and U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Kazakhstan from 1995-1998"):

The opposition parties, who are not naive when it comes to using the media, have set a trap for the president. They know that by staging illegal rallies in downtown Baku, rather than authorized demonstrations in other locations, they can guarantee a police response. It doesn't matter who throws the first stone, the rest of the world will see pictures of police forces fighting with demonstrators and think that nothing has changed.

President Aliyev should guard against falling into the trap being set by those whose greater interest is to discredit him.

The president, I believe, fully understands the importance of taking the steps necessary to assuring a free and fair election.

Yes, the president is a wise and far-seeing man, a Great Leader in fact, who will avoid the traps set for him by those nasty "opposition" leaders (traitors is a better word) and will lead his people onward and upward to the shining heights of the future!

Excuse me, I have to throw up now.
posted by languagehat at 7:03 AM on November 3, 2005

Well, SOMETHING is going to happen and I'll be there blogging it the whole way. :)
posted by k8t at 8:08 AM on November 3, 2005