Government News: Top Stories

Azerbaijani protesters want election rerun
by Aida Sultanova

The Associated Press Translate This Article
13 November 2005

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) - More than 20,000 opposition supporters packed a square in Azerbaijan's capital Sunday in the second mass protest in recent days, demanding a rerun of disputed parliamentary elections in this oil-rich Caspian Sea nation.

Gathering under a sea of orange flags and chanting ``Resign!'' and ``Freedom!'', opposition activists railed against what they said was a fraudulent vote in a scene similar to the protests that propelled opposition leaders to power in three other former Soviet republics in recent years.

About 15,000 protesters also demonstrated Wednesday against the Nov. 6 elections.

Official results show President Ilham Aliev's ruling party won the most seats in the 125-member legislature, while opposition parties won just a handful.

International monitors have agreed with the opposition, saying the vote fell short of democratic standards. But the outside observers, such as the Council of Europe, have declined to back the call for a new election, instead saying officials responsible for the alleged fraud should be punished.

On Sunday, Isa Gambar, leader of one of the three main opposition parties, called on Aliev to enter into dialogue with his opponents. ``This is how you can get out of this situation. Don't try another way because there isn't one,'' he told the crowd.

Aliev, who took over from his long-ruling father two years ago in tainted elections, has dismissed the possibility of a popular revolution in Azerbaijan, saying people are satisfied with his government. He has also taken steps to reassure Western nations who have built close ties with the country, including the United States.

Aliev fired two governors accused of interfering in the elections, and four local elections officials were detained on suspicion of falsifying results and abuse of office. New balloting will take place in three districts where pro-government candidates had won seats. In another district, a seat was awarded to an opposition leader after a recount.

The opposition fears that the U.S. interest in Azerbaijan's energy riches will trump its stated commitment to expanding democracy around the world. Azerbaijan is the starting point for an oil pipeline to the Mediterranean, a project Washington strongly backed as a way of reducing dependence on Middle East oil.

The country also is a U.S. ally in Iraq and has troops there.

The State Department found major election day ``irregularities and fraud'' in Azerbaijan, but officials were somewhat mollified after Azerbaijani authorities promised to investigate anomalies.

In the weeks leading up to the elections, Azerbaijani authorities violently cracked down on protesters, beating them with truncheons and dragging some away.

Several government officials were also arrested last month on charges of allegedly participating in a coup plot with Rasul Guliyev, a key opposition figure who has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States to avoid embezzlement charges he claims are trumped up.

Guliyev was detained in Ukraine on an international warrant when he tried to fly back to Azerbaijan to run in the elections, but was later released. Scores of his supporters were also detained.

On the Baku square Sunday, hundreds of riot police armed with batons and shields stood by as the official deadline for the increasingly defiant crowd to disperse passed after two hours

Groups of young men dropped to their knees, as if to start a sit-in, but most protesters reluctantly began leaving and the square was soon empty.

The opposition has asked permission to hold another rally on Friday.

Despite resentment of the grinding poverty afflicting more than 40 percent of the population in Azerbaijan, the opposition so far lacks the popular support that protesters enjoyed in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, where governments were toppled over the past two years.

The Azerbaijani protesters borrowed the color orange from Ukraine's protests that forced a new election after charges of fraud.

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