Azerbaijan: Managed Democracy

With presidential elections in neighboring Georgia and Armenia having been shrouded in some controversy, Asking Tough Questions in Tough Places turns its attention to Azerbaijan which goes to the polls in October. The blog says that Azerbaijan will be sparing no efforts to convince the international community that the vote will be democratic and lawful, but says election watchers are hardly convinced.

As the 2008 Presidential election in Azerbaijan approaches, I predict there will be a substantial amount of revisionism of what happened in the 2005 election. It’s not hard to do — so few people pay attention that it’s easy for regime mouthpieces to say whatever they want without anyone challenging them — and there’s plenty to gain by persuading people who only hear what they want to hear that the election was quite democratic.

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The Aliyev regime is going to be making a lot of effort this year to demonstrate to the US and European partners that Azerbaijan is “democratic and lawful.” We’ll be keeping a watch out here. We specialize in lost causes.