DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION IN AZERBAIJAN SHUT OUT FROM THE ELECTIONS

Thirty-seven days before the November 5 parliamentary elections and ten days after the electoral campaign started, only four political parties have been registered by the Central Election Commission to participate in the proportional part of the election. Candidates from the democratic opposition for single mandate districts are being rejected daily by the regional election commissions. It is obvious that the government has decided to repeat the scenario of 1995 and only allow their own candidates on the ballot.

The most flagrant violation of the electoral procedures governing free and fair elections in democratic and civilized countries concerns the Musavat Party, the strongest and most respected democratic opposition party in Azerbaijan, chaired by Isa Gambar, the former speaker of parliament (1992-93), speaker of parliament from 1992-1993.

On September 19, 2000 the Central Election Commission (CEC) rejected 9,758 of the over 56,000 signatures submitted by the Musavat party (50,000 were required) in support of its candidates for the parliamentary elections. The CEC stated that 4 experts, after "checking" the lists, found a number of signatures to be fake and rejected other signatures for such obscure reasons as that their signatures were supported by their new Azerbaijani rather than old Soviet passports.

The signatures of prominent members of Musavat party were among those rejected, including that of Arif Gadjijev, organizational secretary of the party and head of the electoral campaign,.

The undemocratic practices of the CEC perhaps reached their most surreal when the signature of a certain Hadjiev Mirismail was rejected. Mr. Mirismail happens to be the legal advisor to the Musavat party and the party’s representative to the CEC, and as such he has signed each of the 1028 lists stating their authenticity. Mirismail added his own signature on the last page, this time as a supporter of the Musavat party. An uninformed, tired clerk randomly rejected his signature- a signature accepted as authentic 1028 times before. On September 20, the Musavat Party appealed the CEC’s decision to the Court of Appeals. The appeal asserted that: 1. The court decision violated several points of the Law on Elections, especially #43.3, which calls for the signatures to be examined by a working group. No such working group was ever created. 2. No real evaluation of the signatures was ever conducted. To prove this, the Musavat Party attached the statement of a state-certified graphologist explaining what constitutes a real graphological examination. The experts hired by Musavat stated that in order to seriously check more than 56,000 signatures, 4 experts would have to have worked non-stop 12 hours a day for 69 days. 3. Musavat submitted over 2000 written statements from signatories whose signatures were rejected stating that they themselves had signed the list. Independent experts authenticated these statements. 4. The procedure of CEC totally violated the guaranteed right of all parties to equality, fairness and justice.

[The full text of the appeal may be obtained from the Musavat Party: musavat_party@azerin.com]

On September 25, the Appellate Court was supposed to rule on the Musavat party’s case against the CEC. The judges first declared that they could not hear the case because the CEC’s representative could not attend for "very important reasons." Musavat party lawyers protested that the law required that the case be resolved five days after the appeal was submitted. One of the judges promised that the court would resume once the CEC’s absence was explained, but it remains unclear when that will be. The court then declared that experts had been called upon to examine ALL 56,000 Musavat party signatures.

By calling for an evaluation of all the signatures, the court overstepped its jurisdiction and proved itself to be complicit in the regime’s efforts to prevent participatory democratic elections. The court was convened to rule on the matter of whether the CEC had improperly rejected 9,758 signatures. Rather than addressing the authenticity of the 9,758 signatures in question, the court was in essence calling into question the remaining 46,242, which until then had never been challenged by the authorities. It is beyond the prerogative of the court to begin such an investigation without being asked to do so by the CEC or the Musavat Party. In practical terms, an evaluation of the signatures is not feasible without contacting the list’s signatories. Most importantly, a review of all 56,000 signatures would require months, postponing any decision until after the November 5 elections and effectively ruling out participation by the Musavat Party.

These events have reinforced the popular belief that neither the courts nor the CEC act independently of the regime.

In the meantime, most opposition candidates running in single mandate districts that collected and submitted the required 2000 signatures have been rejected. Among the single member constituency candidates who have been rejected are all of those who belong to the majority wing of the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (APFP) that does not support Ali Kerimov (who was allowed to register his party for the proportional part of the elections). The democratic opposition’s signatures are being rejected under every imaginable pretext, for example, that the signatory is eighteen years of age and therefore should be not be at home but serving in the army. Most of the time signatures are rejected without any justification at all. While candidates lose time appealing their cases in the courts and press, officially registered candidates are campaigning, and the democrats are once again losing hope that anything will change in Azerbaijan.