Former Azeri president urges elections postponed to ensure transparency
Text of report by Azerbaijani newspaper 'Zerkalo' on 11th October entitled "Ayaz Mutallibov proposes moving the election date" by Mamedov

[subhead] In order to ensure democracy in the elections

The Azerbaijani ex-president, Ayaz Mutallibov, convened a press conference for Russian media representatives devoted to the pre-election situation in Azerbaijan.

Mutallibov associated the Azerbaijani authorities' most recent concessions connected with permitting opposition parties to participate in the elections and releasing from custody the editor of 'Yeni Musavat' newspaper, Rauf Arifoglu, with pressure from international organizations, mainly the National Democratic Institute and the US State Department.

The ex-president described a situation in Azerbaijan, which, he said, does not allow the opposition to influence the course of events and obliges the opposition to resort to the help of international organizations.

Mutallibov divided the opposition parties into two groups: "puppet parties" and real ones. The ex-president suggests that the Party for National Independence of Azerbaijan, which the Azerbaijani authorities have allowed to participate in the elections, belongs to the first group.

"A farce, which had no sense for the authorities, has been played with Musavat and has had the opposite effect of adding extra votes to this party," Mutallibov believes. He called the campaign against Musavat "the most unsuccessful step of the authorities". He connected Aliyev's recent appeal to the CEC [Central Electoral Commission] with a proposal to permit all parties to participate in the elections with the absence of democratic institutions, which are able to influence the transparency of the elections.

However, Mutallibov believes that this tug of war with Musavat has brought definite dividends to the authorities. "As a result Musavat has got less time to publicize its candidates," he believes.

On the other hand, Mutallibov is dissatisfied that representatives from the whole political spectrum of Azerbaijan will not take part in the forthcoming elections. The ex-president said the representatives of the basically uncompromising opposition will remain outside the elections. These are, first of all, the Unity Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Namus Party.

According to Mutallibov's information, very soon the Civic Solidarity Party will also refuse to participate in the elections. "All these reasons and the fact that a great number of voters are not in the country will lead to a situation where the interests of the whole of Azerbaijan will not be represented in the new parliament."

The ex-president thinks that moving the date of the parliamentary elections would be a way out of the situated created. Besides, he believes, the authorities must take care that all political forces in the country are involved in the elections. "Only in this way can the elections be considered fully democratic," the ex-president believes.

Source: 'Zerkalo', Baku, in Russian 11 Oct 00 p1

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Posted October 18, 2000 © Eurasianet
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