BACKGROUND: In January 20,1990, Soviet troops entered Baku, fired on pro-independence forces in the streets, imposed a state of emergency and provided the communists an overwhelming majority in the 350-seat Soviet Azerbaijani parliament. The 1990 parliamentary elections prepared the basis for future instabilities. In the 1995 parliamentary elections, ruling party members secured 94% of vote including Heydar Aliev’s son, brother, daughter’s husband and other relatives. The opposition Musavat Party was not allowed to participate in the 1995 elections but for the 2000 elections, the Musavat and Popular Front opposition parties agreed to participate in the election as a single block. After the death of President Elchibey in August, the parties decided to participate in the elections separately greatly weakening their chances.

For the 2000 elections, as part of the Council of Europe’s upcoming vote on Azerbaijan’s admission into the Council, Azerbaijan was asked "to ensure the upcoming elections be free and impartial". Despite barriers across the country, pro-democratic forces launched an active campaign visiting local districts to meet people all across the country. State controlled television and newspapers waged an unlimited propaganda war to discredit opposition parties by blaming them for all of Azerbaijan’s failures over the past decade. Pro-democratic parties were accused of being agents of foreign countries, sponging off of grants from foreign foundations and destroying Azerbaijan by violating the peace, prosperity and stability created by President Aliev. Aliev’s son, Ilham, served as the most outspoken and visible critic of the pro-democratic parties.

Observers from the Council of Europe, NDI, representatives of Eastern European NGOs and around 200 observers from the OSCE monitored the election process. Immediately after the elections, Aliev’s party claimed victory with 75%, while the Musavat party claimed over 50 % of the vote. Foreign observer election polls indicated Musavat’s absolute dominance in the election. According to the US-based NDI report, the NDI representatives witnessed ballot box stuffing, both during the vote and counting process. They also saw the use of pre-signed and cut ballot papers, the co-mingling of ballot papers in multiple precincts, and instances of attempts to count the vote behind closed doors to exclude observers. The Economist magazine called the election "a farce." During the parliamentary elections, international organizations such as Human Rights Watch witnessed numerous instances of ballot stuffing, multiple voting and falsified ballots.

IMPLICATIONS: According to the Washington Post, President Heydar Aliev orchestrated another fraudulent parliamentary election in line with his plan to install his son as his successor. Observers noted that they "did not expect such primitive methods to be used during the election." World observers hold that the Azerbaijan parliamentary elections were rigged. The head of the OSCE observer mission, Ambassador Gerard Stoudmann, declared that the election was rigged. Andreas Gross of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly stated that "Never before have we seen so many falsified ballots". The one bright comment on the elections came from the United States State Department that stated while there were restrictions on observers and serious election irregularities, the mere fact of opposition party participation was a progressive development for Azerbaijan.

Leaders of all opposition parties declared the elections to be false and called the government’s actions criminal, if not an attempted coup. The European Institute of Media charged that the election campaign was held under grossly unequal conditions, as the ruling party controlled over 50% of television and radio air time just for campaign propaganda. Overwhelmed by the shock of the complete falsifications, and international and internal pressure, the government has tried to manipulate the voting results with a new round of falsifications. Conditional approval of Azerbaijani admission to Council of Europe forced the government to take cosmetic steps to improve its report to the Council and other international organizations. The authorities annulled election results in four districts and announced they would investigate irregularities.

The most remarkable of the government’s vote falsification has been the artificial increase in the percentages of relatively unknown parties to create a semblance of a multi-party parliament. For instance, the government’s official results of the election gave only the Popular Front seats in parliament along with Akaev’s party. Under pressure, the government artificially changed the percentage of votes at the expense of the ruling party to create a "pluralist parliament" by rising the percentage of certain opposition parties over 6% to qualify them for parliamentary seats, while still excluding the leading opposition Musavat and National Independence parties. Aliev also raised the percentage of the Communist Party granting them two seats in parliament. On November 14, opposition parties renounced the election results, refused to participate in the parliament and pledged to work together to nullify the election results and hold new parliamentary elections.

CONCLUSION: Azerbaijani authorities have applied medieval tactics to select parliamentary members loyal to Aliev’s regime. Internationally, Azerbaijan has come under great suspicion for its lack of commitment toward democracy. It is obvious that the new parliament has been selected by President Heydar Aliev himself, not through a democratic election process. The parliament’s composition now allows for the possibility that Aliev’s son will succeed him or become acting president. Such a development would be highly undesirable for Azerbaijan. For the most part, the Azerbaijani people have lost their hope for free choice of their representatives and they feel increasingly isolated and ignored. The new Azerbaijan parliament represents an unbalance of political forces that could keep the country unstable for years.

The parliament continues to serve as a branch of the executive branch, preventing any debate of the nation’s tremendous problems. Most dangerous is the probability that the "parliament" will accept a humiliating peace plan supported and proposed by President Aliev to resolve the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. President Aliev is trying to convince the nation that the country is moving toward democracy and that the nation’s difficulties are the result of Azerbaijan’s inherent particularities. But it is not likely that Azerbaijani people will accept primitive election fraud much longer. Nor is it plausible that the population will continue to accept Aliev’s line that the government’s election falsifications are merely a reflection of "inherent particularities" of Azerbaijan’s current "democracy".

AUTHOR BIO: Elkhan Mehtiyev is head of the Peace and Conflict Resolution Center in Baku, Azerbaijan. He is currently a NATO Fellow and a Visiting Scholar at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at The Johns Hopkins University—SAIS.

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