The next presidential elections of Azerbaijan will be held in October 2018, and the probable political force that will try to compete against the ruling President or his nominee, can be the “National Council” alliance of several oppositional political parties (the candidate of the “National Council” in 2013 elections was Jamil Hasanli). Iranologist Artyom Tonoyan mentioned this in an interview with Aravot.am.
According to him, at this moment attempts to gather the relatively active oppositional population around him and to gradually mobilize a wider audience of people, perhaps, are just what the alliance does, taking into consideration that within a month from September 23 to October 28, it has held 3 rallies at the “Mahsul” stadium in Yasamal district of Baku.
“The mentioned rallies did not have a large number of participants, but it is obvious that demonstrations and rallies not exceeding even 2000-3000 participants contain “elements of danger” according to the Azerbaijani authorities: during the first of the last three rallies young citizens were arrested, during the second cultural figures participating in the rally were dismissed, who are well-known and popular among the citizens, and on the eve of the third rally a statement was issued that in the village of Lokbatan in Azerbaijan “the leader and two other members of the group operating under the instructions of the extreme religious group beyond the borders of Azerbaijan” were neutralized by the State Security Service of the country, who were killed during the exchange of fire. It was noted in the statement that the neutralized people intended to disrupt stability and security in Azerbaijan and organize a terrorist act to create a public-political dissidence, during a rally on October 28 in Baku”, said Artyom Tonoyan.
He noted that, in general, the dissemination of this information before the last rally was also aimed at deepening the atmosphere of fear in the society, and this time to keep people away from participating in the rally by the terrorist threat, according to the oppositional part of the Azerbaijani society.
“The main target of criticism during the rallies was the domestic and economic policy of the Azerbaijani authorities. In particular, they stressed the lack of jobs and the number of unemployed in Azerbaijan, widespread corruption, lack of freedom of speech, the large number of political prisoners, the offshoring of the Azerbaijan’s financial capital, low rates of non-oil exports. From our point of view, it is interesting that Azerbaijan’s non-oil export indexes were compared with the same indexes in Armenia by the leader of the Azerbaijani Popular Front Party Ali Karimli before the recent rally and the its eve (those are comparable to the extent that Armenia does not have oil export, therefore, any export from Armenia is non-oil).
It was reported that Armenia smaller from Azerbaijan by territory and population exceeded Azerbaijan by 50%, and in case of calculation of a per capita share it exceeded Azerbaijan by 4.5 times. The current trends suggest that the target of the opposition’s criticism will also be the religious policy of the incumbent president, since the latter has created sufficient grounds for criticism in that regard, especially during his last five years”, our interlocutor stated.
He does not consider it accidental, that before the last rally a well-known religious figure of Azerbaijan, Taleh Bagirzade, who now is in the prison of Gobustan urged the people to actively participate, comparing his and his followers path with the one of the main character of Shia Islam in the fight against violence, Imam Hussein.
Luiza SUKIASYAN
