AS EXPECTED

The Azerbaijani opposition is using the "Eurovision-2012" song contest in Baku in an attempt to win back public interest which has long since "shrunk to a minimum". With this in mind the opposition is stepping up its rallies, calculating, not without justification, that interest in Azerbaijan is clearly increasing and therefore protest actions will be noticed. How is the population reacting to these activities? Does the electorate support their slogans and demands or have the rally organizers erred in their calculations and expectations? The results of a nationwide poll carried out by the Ryai Monitoring Centre have helped us to try and solve these questions.

But we will return to the opposition later. First of all I would like to see how high the general interest of the population is in "Eurovision-2012". The poll by the Ryai Monitoring Centre recorded a persistent (and understandable) increase in interest in the contest. For example, whereas last year about 60 % of the population followed it, today this figure has leapt to 80%. Other regions are also showing quite an active interest - up to 73%. And, the centre believes, it doesn't end there: the closer the contest gets, the greater the commotion, in the best sense of the word. However, there is no point expecting this figure to reach 100% because there are some people who couldn't care less about the event and others who are even against it.

The total number of "viewers" could be about 85%. But if all goes well and Azerbaijan's representative Sabina Babayeva reaches the last five, then this figure could even go up a little. Incidentally, Ryai is planning to run a final poll immediately after the competition.

As regards the opposition's activity, judging by the results of the poll, the vast majority of the country's population has a negative attitude to its attempts to use the Eurovision-2012 Song Contest for its political ends.  

The results of this sounding of national opinion show that the public has been poorly briefed about the opposition rallies - only 15.5% of respondents had heard about them and their slogans. Another 36.6% had heard something about their actions but didn't know what they were about. And nearly 48% of respondents first heard about the opposition rallies from the people interviewing them. But even those who were aware of these actions were fairly negative about them.

Judging by the results of the poll, the rallies trigger not just negative emotions (which in propaganda terms is not always a bad thing - people get angry but at least they have drawn attention to them and remembered them). The most negative thing as far as the opposition is concerned is that they first started to trigger anger, disillusion and, at the least, indifference among the population. In other words, "the good old" opposition was simply making a nuisance of itself as usual. And as was confirmed in Ryai, the polls have long since been giving the opposition a low rating.

This conclusion is confirmed by the eloquent replies to the following question on the form: "What is your opinion of these actions by the opposition?" It turned out that the vast majority of the population (86.6%) have a negative view of them or, at best, are indifferent towards the opposition. Only 7% of respondents were on the opposition's side in one degree or another.

It was also observed that when it comes to the percentage of the population that supports the opponents of the Azerbaijani authorities the respondents gave (within the poll's margins of error) virtually the same figure - 8.6%.

Hypothetically, from the poll's figures, it follows that the protest base among the respondents is about 10%. But this in no way means that all of them might form the electoral base of the opposition. Every society has its dissatisfied people, fault-finders and critics and by no means every dissatisfied person is prepared to join the colours of the opposition.  

If we look at how the opposition is trying to see itself and return to the subject of the slogans that are being shouted at the rallies, then it becomes clear that it has committed a gross propaganda error. As we know, one of the slogans being shouted at one of the rallies was: "What we need is Karabakh, not Eurovision!" In other words, the opposition wanted "to kill two birds with one stone": to play on people's patriotic feelings and at the same time show the authorities in a poor light. At first glance this was a successful PR move because it "cuts to the quick", but what's the end result? The devil, as they say, is in the detail.

Here is an interesting detail. As Ryai points out, during the poll many respondents had to ask their interviewers to clarify their question (it had been posed as follows: "At their rally the opposition shouted the slogan: "What we need is Karabakh, not "Eurovision"! With which of the opinions in this slogan do you most agree?"). And after a little thought the recipients selected one of these alternatives. The result was that about a half (45.8%) of those questioned described this slogan as a provocation, and 37.3% believed that the opposition was continuing to ignore all the good things the authorities were doing. In their opinion, all of Azerbaijan's successes, including the Eurovision Song Contest, actually help to solve the problem of Karabakh.  

In other words, if you go by the results of the poll, those behind the slogan have got it wrong. They have not only failed to achieve their goals but have "shown themselves up" and placed themselves in a negative light. To be fair, we should point out that we also found pragmatists who did not object to the way this question was put, as if to say all's fair in politics.  There were also supporters of the slogan (incidentally, most of them had not seen last year's contest and had no plans to watch the 2012 Song Contest), but they made up only one tenth of those questioned.

Generally speaking, the respondents of the poll were extremely negative about the opposition's slogan, saying that they were continuing to ignore any of the authorities' successes and were acting in a provocative manner. Among the spin doctors, such shocking blunders are being described as "political hara-kiri". In other words, judging by the results of the poll, the majority of the population are well aware that in essence "Eurovision-2012" does not diminish but indirectly helps to solve the problem of Karabakh.

Thus, the words of President Ilham Aliyev that there are two enemies of Azerbaijan's successes - Armenia and the Azerbaijani opposition - are again confirmed.

Having analyzed the results of this sounding of public opinion, one may conclude that the actions of the Azerbaijani opposition are not finding the response they expected in society, rather the contrary. As one respondent said: "our opposition is like an old suitcase without a handle - it's hard to carry it but a shame to throw it away". Of course, the respondent's remark is rather like a cruel sentence, but one only has to look at the results of the poll once more to convince oneself that society is, to say the least, fed up with the Azerbaijani opposition.