Musavat Party leader slams Azeri president's "naughty child"

The chairman of the Musavat Party, Isa Gambar, appeared in his party's televised election campaign broadcast at 1715 gmt on 27th October 2000. Before he started to speak the party's advertisement clip was shown.

At the beginning of his speech Gambar recalled that the first secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan in 1982-1988, Kamran Bagirov, had died recently. He offered condolences to Bagirov's family and said that, regrettably, neither Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev nor other high-ranking officials attended the funeral. Gambar said that he was not idealizing Bagirov, who was a Soviet-style leader. "But I would like to say that if this is how Heydar Aliyev behaves towards his comrades-in-arms and members of his team, what can the people, persons unknown to him and those he considers rivals, expect?" Gambar asked.

Gambar spoke about his recent campaign meetings in Sheki, Zakataly, Imishli, Gabala, Oguz, Ismailly and Saatly Districts and his meetings with refugees and young people in Baku. He said that he was once again fascinated by the Azerbaijani people, who have great endurance despite all the difficulties of Heydar Aliyev's seven-year rule. Gambar said that on 28th October he would have meetings in Sumgait and recalled that in 1995 the authorities had falsified the election results in this town, from where he was a candidate. Gambar said that this time the authorities would not be able to falsify the elections and that Musavat would win. He also spoke about plans to visit Lenkoran, Masally, Tovuz, Kazakh, Beylagan, Barda, Khachmas Districts and Baku suburbs.

Gambar said that after his meetings the authorities held their own meetings. "There is one simple difference: people come to our meetings voluntarily, whereas people are dragged by force from offices and enterprises to meetings with the authorities or the New Azerbaijan Party [NAP]. Everyone sees and knows this."

Gambar said that the authorities were anxious about Musavat's posters on the streets and that someone was tearing them up or even sticking posters advertising the NAP deputy chairman and Heydar Aliyev's son, Ilham Aliyev, over Musavat's ones.

Gambar then spoke about Ilham Aliyev's election campaign broadcast on 25th October in which he criticized Gambar's one-month stint as acting president in 1992. Gambar rejected Ilham Aliyev's statement and said that "I did not come to power accidentally, I came to power in May 1992 as a result of the people's movement". "I am proud that I was the first non-Communist leader of Azerbaijan in 1992," Gambar said.

Gambar explained his decision not to pardon seven criminals, who received capital punishment at that time, by citing their heinous crimes against the Azerbaijani people. He gave the example of two of them who had taken 11 members of one family to a barn and set it on fire. This happened in a village in Karabakh in 1989. Gambar said: "If Ilham Aliyev backs the idea of pardoning criminals of this type, let him say this openly and the people will see who is who. The current authorities like to imprison innocent people and promote criminals to high posts". He recalled the attempted coups in October 1994 and March 1995, when the authorities acted quite brutally and killed many people. Gambar also listed prisoners who died in prison. "These authorities are guilty of killing so many people that it is impossible to count them all. I believe that the people know quite well who is cruel and who is humane," Gambar said.

"Ilham Aliyev asks: what have you done for this nation? The people know very well what we have done. We started fighting for freedom at a young age. We started fighting for Azerbaijan's independence, its territorial integrity, our Karabakh and Nakhichevan's villages. In one of his interviews Ilham Aliyev himself told ANS TV that during these years, when the people were fighting for independence and Karabakh, he was involved in the fruit machine business in Moscow," Gambar said.

Gambar continued: "Ilham Aliyev speaks a lot about oil. In the summer of 1993, when Heydar Aliyev just came to power, he said: oil is not the property of someone's grandfather. This is very true. I also believe that oil is not the property of someone's grandfather. But, at the same time, oil is not the property of someone's naughty child either. Oil belongs to the people and the nation. The people must be in control of oil. The people must determine how oil revenues are distributed, which areas they will be directed to and on what problems they will be spent. Ilham Aliyev says: you will not come to power. But Ilham Aliyev is not a decision-maker on this issue. This is decided neither by Heydar Aliyev nor his naughty child. The people will decide who will come to power and who will lose power. You will see this, Inshallah, at the elections in the near future".

Gambar spoke about the 400 non-registered candidates under the first-past-the-post system and named ex-Speaker Yagub Mammadov, ex-Prime Ministers Panah Huseynov and Ali Masimov, and other former officials. He described this as a violation of the rights of more than one million voters.

In conclusion, Gambar showed hard copies of Musavat's programmes covering various spheres of political, economic and social life in reply to Heydar Aliyev's statement that the opposition had no programmes of its own. Gambar said that he was ready to send them to Heydar Aliyev once again. He again called on voters to come to the polling stations on 5th November and vote for Musavat.

Source: Azerbaijani TV, Channel One, Baku, in Azeri 1715 gmt 27 Oct 00

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Posted October 31, 2000 © Eurasianet
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