BEYOND COMPETITION

The election campaign in Azerbaijan is at its height. Ten candidates are vying for the post of president, among them representatives of various political forces and independent candidates. What is the situation like in the run-up to the elections, how are people likely to vote and what is the distribution of forces going to be? The polling agencies, which have become noticeably more active in the run-up to the election, are trying to find the answers to these questions.

What the polls say

The European Centre for Survey Research, UK (ECSR), conducted a nation-wide public face-to-face survey in Azerbaijan on 11-16 September. More than 1,500 people over the age of 18 were interviewed in 42 locations throughout the country. The European Centre reported from its headquarters in London, that the poll was based on a multi-stage, random selection of people, adequately reflecting the socio-demographic make-up of the population. It is accurate to within a margin of plus or minus 3%.

We note that the ECSR is a prestigious international organisation (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/ecsr) engaged in comparative studies and public opinion polls. The organisation actively works together with international structures, in particular the European Union, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the World Bank, the International Political Science Association (IPSA), the European Scientific Foundation (ESF) and so on. In 1991-2002 alone the centre's head, Christian Haerpfer was the organiser and co-ordinator of 57 large-scale sociological studies. The centre counts among its assets "The New Democracies Barometer, 1992-1998", and "The Eurasian Barometer".

ECSR head Professor Christian Haerpfer has been elected the president of the World Values Survey Association (WVSA). He is also the vice-president of the committee of the International Political Science Association (IPSA), the head, consultant and member of the committees of many of the European and international structures. In particular, the Association for the Study of Nationalities (Columbia University, USA), the European Science Foundation (Strasbourg, France), the American Political Science Association, and others. Now let's get back to the survey itself. 

They explain at the European Centre that this survey is only the first phase of the "Democratic Values, political and electoral behave of the people of Azerbaijan" project. The second phase is to be implemented before the end of the year when it will be possible to compare public opinion before and after the election campaign, as well as learning to what extent citizens' election-related expectations coincided with the actual outcome.

Judging from the poll, the state of democracy in the republic is rated positively. Almost two thirds of the respondents chose the alternatives "satisfied" or "rather satisfied than not". The respondents thought that the situation had improved over the last 10 years and rated the mass media as reasonably free. 

It is interesting that for a fairly large proportion of the respondents involvement in social and political life is "limited" to talks about politics with friends and family members, as well as watching TV news bulletins. This means that this can be seen more as a pastime than actual participation in social and political life. However, this attitude towards politics is most probably rooted in scepticism with regard to the political parties: 65.6% of respondents do not regard themselves as supporters of any political party at all.

At the same time, it turned out on the threshold of the elections that it was sufficiently likely that respondents would vote in high numbers, since more than 82% of the respondents said that they would vote. But we know from Central Electoral Commission figures for the last election, where the turnout was 70%, that the numbers intending to vote and those who actually did vote differs.

How many votes are the candidates likely to get? The survey shows that 88.7% of voters would vote for President Ilham Aliyev; Jamil Hasanli, the representative of the opposition alliance, the National Council of Democratic Forces, "should get" 0.6% of the vote; the independent candidate Zahid Oruc and the leader of the "Umid" party, Iqbal Agazada, would each receive 0.3% of the vote; Qudrat Hasanquliyev (People's Front Party of Unified Azerbaijan and Ilyas Ismayilov (Justice Party) would each get 0.2% of the vote; Farac Quliyev (Party of National Revival) and Araz Alizada (Social Democratic Party) would each receive 0.1% of the vote. In other words, Ilham Aliyev's chances of winning the race are much greater than anyone else's. 

The poll by the prestigious European organisation does in fact back up the previous sociological surveys conducted by Azerbaijan's central monitoring agency "Ray", the American company Arthur J. Finkelstein and Associates and also by a number of local and foreign media.

For example, the publication EurasiaNet notes that only one of the 12 Baku residents interviewed by the article's author was able to name any candidate other than Ilham Aliyev. The experts interviewed on the "Voice of Russia" radio station also forecast that Ilham Aliyev would gain a resounding victory at the elections. Experts of the Lenta.ru portal thought that yet again the Azeri opposition had failed to come to an agreement and find a worthy opponent to Ilham Aliyev. The "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" also forecast a landslide victory for Ilham Aliyev at the forthcoming elections. "Local and foreign experts evidently do not believe that the outcome of the election will produce any surprises, because, even if all the forces opposed to President Ilham Aliyev were to join forces, there would not be a worthy opponent to the incumbent head of state," the newspaper writes.

In its turn, the Turkish newspaper "Turkiye" pointed out that the clergy in Azerbaijan had pledged their support for Ilham Aliyev in the upcoming elections. In particular, the newspaper writes that the Board of Caucasus Muslims, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Jewish community in Azerbaijan, had issued a statement in which they supported the nomination of the incumbent head of state. The publication notes that Ilham Aliyev enjoys great respect among believers.

A strong link

Almost all the analyses of the situation in the run-up to the election and the distribution of forces point to the fact that the actual socio-economic situation in Azerbaijan has greatly contributed to the incumbent president's high rating. The experts also refer to the assessments of the international organisations and polling agencies in which Azerbaijan usually occupies leading positions in a whole number of directions. The Italian "Brain Tape" - Instituto per Gli Studi Politica Internazionale (ISPI) [the Institute of International Political Studies] circulated the following report: "Ten Years in action; Southern Caucasus 2003-2013. The analyst Matteo Verda notes that, although Azerbaijan has managed to achieve rapid development and economic growth in double figures over the last decade, Georgia and Armenia's growth has been less marked. 

The expert believes that "the Ilham Aliyev's anticipated victory in Azerbaijan's 2013 elections will guarantee the stability of the political system and ensure that the present situation is maintained over the next 10 years, thus creating favourable conditions for attracting investments into the country's economy."

The prestigious British journal Total Politics has published an article stating that an incredible expansion of infrastructure growth and an improvement in the country's well-being had occurred over the last 10 years. In the conclusions published in the world media by foreign observers, experts and politicians, political power in Azerbaijan is in the reliable hands of a strong president, who is conducting a many-sided foreign policy aimed at preserving the balance of forces between Azerbaijan and other states. Throughout the time that President Ilham Aliyev has been in office in Azerbaijan, both local and foreign public opinion polls have been conducted, determining his rating among the public as no less than 80%," it says in the newspaper. 

However, nothing can make such an impact on the population's electoral preferences as direct social well-being. Over the last 10 years wages and pensions in Azerbaijan have increased five- or six-fold. More than 17m square metres of housing have been built (more than 150,000 flats). Whereas in 2004 there were 24 private cars per 100 families, last year there were 46. The number of Internet users per 100 citizens has grown from five in 2003 to 70 in 2012. In comparison, in developed countries this figure has risen from 42 to 76.8 per 100 people in the same period. In 2012 approximately 2.8 m Azerbaijani tourists spent $2bn dollars abroad, whereas back in 2003 only 1.5m people crossed the frontier.

The current head of state in Azerbaijan has brought numerous benefits to the country owing to his economic and even foreign policy successes. 

The weak link

Ilham Aliyev's rivals face a completely different situation in the election campaign. The National Council of Democratic Forces, which has nominated the historian Camil Hasanli as its candidate, is distinguished for the particularly radical nature of its policies. The opposition National Council of Democratic Forces is made up of revanchist forces who were already in power during the first years of independence, but left office after bringing the country to the brink of civil war. It is precisely the revanchist attitudes in that camp that most frighten the ordinary voter, who has become accustomed to stability and predictability over the past 20 years.

On the other hand, the very process of forming the National Council, which is referred to in the strongest opposition camp as a "cartoon film" does not instil trust in the population. And even that small part of the discontented electorate is in fact refusing to back the opposition, given their experience of government by these forces at the beginning of the 1990s and the current messy, long drawn out inter-relations between the members of this association as well as their failure to consolidate their positions. People are wary of the political and personal rows being transferred to the government's offices. 
There are many other objective reasons why people are not supporting the radical opposition. One of these is the prevalence of populism in the election campaigning and the absence of any electoral promises that could actually be fulfilled. 

Not only the public opinion polls highlight the low ratings of the authorities' opponents. The reasons for these become clear when the outcome of opposition rallies is analysed and the population's donations to Camil Hasanli's bank account are totted up.

Only a couple of thousand supporters attend the National Council's rallies in the centre of Baku and only just over 20,000 manats were donated to Hasanli's account, 3,000 of which were donated by Rustam Ibragimbekov, the ideological instigator and sole candidate of the National Council who did not even stand. When Ibrahimbayov [Ibragimbekov] appealed to the population to donate one manat each in support of Camil Hasanli, Rustam Ibrahimbayov was calculating on collecting one million manats. He said that this would be important not so much from a financial point of view, but as a demonstration of people's discontent. "If at least one million people put one manat each into Camil Hasanli's account, that will mean that 25% of the population (who have the right to vote - H.M.) are saying 'no' to the authorities," Ibrahimbayov said at that time. It turns out that, according to his way of thinking, given the sum collected by the only National Council candidate, not even 0.5% of the voters are preparing say "no" to the authorities. And if we divide up that percentage of the "discontented" votes among the rivals of the government candidate, the picture we get is something like the one demonstrated by the public opinion poll - 0.1-0.6% of the vote for each of Ilham Aliyev's rivals. 

So much for ratings, but the vulnerable situation of the National Council has been further undermined by the replacement of its candidate almost on the finishing line. Camil Hasanli replaced Rustam Ibrahimbayov, managing to forget right until the end of candidate registration that his Russian citizenship does not permit him to stand for president of Azerbaijan. To put it in other words, "you don't change the horses in the middle of the river crossing" and this error on the part of the opposition will most definitely have an effect on the outcome of the election. Once they realised this, the leaders of the National Council began to say beforehand that votes for them would be stolen and there would be election fraud. But an analysis of the distribution of forces during the election campaign and the conclusions drawn by the international organisations, point to the opposite. The authorities have no interest in falsifying the results. 

As regards the election situation, the statement made by the PACE university [New York] monitoring mission on the eve of the presidential elections, noted the willingness of Azerbaijan's authorities to allow the international observers access to monitor the elections, pointed out the information and educational work provided by the Central Electoral Commission, the training given to the members of the electoral commissions and also the constant checking of the electoral rolls. However, the effectiveness and quality of this work will be manifest on election day , the document states. It is thought at PACE that the forthcoming election will be held in a competitive environment. 

Whatever happens, it is up to the voters to do the voting. Whom the voter will vote for, whether the forecasts of the pollsters will turn out to be true or not and which path Azerbaijan will take in the future will ultimately become clear on 9 October.