Valida Abasova, Miss Azerbaijan 2000, on the campaign trail in Baku, Republic of Azerbaijan © Sitara Ibrahimova / Eurasianet

As the imminent parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan approach, and as part of its special coverage of events as they unfold, Eurasianet says that hopes that the opposition would unite have been dashed.

Despite heated and protracted talks, Azerbaijan’s two largest opposition electoral blocs have failed to agree on forming an electoral alliance for the November 6 parliamentary election. Though the two blocs, Yeni Siyaset (YeS) and Azadlig, have pledged to cooperate informally, observers have cast the news as a setback for the opposition’s chances at the polls.

The online publication also carries an excellent photoblog section which even features a photostory on Miss Azerbaijan 2000’s attempts to secure herself a seat in the Azerbaijani Milli Mejlis.

Meanwhile, Alexander Muzykantsky, chairperson of the department of world politics at Moscow State University, writes that the parliamentary elections are a crucial test for Azerbaijan. However, he rules out the possibility of a “colored revolution” in the oil rich state.

A “dress rehearsal” failed in October two years ago, when the opposition, incapable of uniting around a single candidate to challenge Ilham in the presidential election, declared the results to have been falsified and called people into the streets. Only several hundred showed up, and the police quickly dispersed them, arresting dozens.

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Most importantly however, the previous “color revolutions” underscore the crucial role of world public opinion and the global mass media that shape it. As in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the fate of the regime and the country may well hang on whether the current government is portrayed on the world’s television screens as a violator of human rights that is thwarting the will of the people and thus rejecting “generally accepted democratic values.”

Such an image may be less valid in Azerbaijan. After coming to power in 1993, Heydar Aliyev stopped the war with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, secured Azerbaijan’s existence as a sovereign state, and, as the oil-and-gas sector flourished, oversaw the country’s growing international authority. The transfer of power from father to son took place peacefully, and Ilham’s administration has presided over completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline — to the annoyance of Russia and Armenia.

At the same time, high oil prices have enabled higher social spending and infrastructure investment. Today, the capital, Baku, resembles a huge construction site, with high-rise housing, stores and roads being built at a breakneck pace — and apparently benefiting the broad strata of the population.

In fact, as usual, CIS observers appear to be happy with preparations for the elections in Azerbaijan, it would appear that the West would rather the elections pass smoothly.

Most importantly however, the previous “color revolutions” underscore the crucial role of world public opinion and the global mass media that shape it. As in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the fate of the regime and the country may well hang on whether the current government is portrayed on the world’s television screens as a violator of human rights that is thwarting the will of the people and thus rejecting “generally accepted democratic values.”

Such an image may be less valid in Azerbaijan. After coming to power in 1993, Heydar Aliyev stopped the war with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, secured Azerbaijan’s existence as a sovereign state, and, as the oil-and-gas sector flourished, oversaw the country’s growing international authority. The transfer of power from father to son took place peacefully, and Ilham’s administration has presided over completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline — to the annoyance of Russia and Armenia.

At the same time, high oil prices have enabled higher social spending and infrastructure investment. Today, the capital, Baku, resembles a huge construction site, with high-rise housing, stores and roads being built at a breakneck pace — and apparently benefiting the broad strata of the population.

Nevertheless, as experience has shown in Georgia, never count your chickens before they hatch. The November 2003 Rose Revolution surprised even the most seasoned of regional analysts, and Muzykantsky obviously doesn’t want to fall into the same trap.

But almost all post-Soviet states remain weak, and therefore vulnerable to domestic turmoil. Azerbaijan is no exception, and Russia, having been burned by its naked intervention on behalf of the governments in Georgia and Ukraine, has given every indication that it intends to sit this one out. The government appears confident that high oil prices, administrative resources and dominance of the local media will ensure an election victory. That may not be enough.

However, there are some more critical voices. The New Republic accuses an American Pollster of Helping to Steal Azerbaijan’s Elections.

But Aliyev may have found an answer to this dilemma in the form of Warren Mitofsky. Mitofsky, the grandfather of exit polls, introduced exit polling to the media in 1967 and later founded Voter News Service, the consortium of major television networks that release exit polls for the U.S. presidential elections. He has been president of both the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and the National Council on Public Polls (NCPP). More recently, however, his missteps during the 2004 presidential elections–in which, based on his research, the exit polls by National Election Pool (a consortium of AP, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and NBC) showed Kerry in the lead throughout Election Day–has called into question his methodology. And his mysterious involvement in Azerbaijan’s parliamentary elections raises a troubling prospect: Is Mitofsky about to help Aliyev steal an election?

It is standard practice for pollsters who intend to disclose their results publicly to also make public the sources of their funding (disclosure of funding is listed as one of AAPOR’s best practices). But when Mitofsky showed up in Baku on September 13 to announce, in a press conference in Azeri, that he would be conducting exit polls here, he was notably cagey about his backers. He dodged questions about both the source and amount of money he was receiving (”It’s a lot of money,” he eventually demurred). He denied that the Azeri government had funded the poll and later stated that he had been hired by a Swiss company called Renaissance Associates. Mitofsky later reiterated to me in a phone conversation that he was hired by a “Swiss company … a bunch of businessmen who want to know what’s going on in the country.”

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And if Mitofsky’s funder looks suspicious, the local contractor he has hired to conduct the poll is also questionable. Its previous polls have often produced results that defied common sense: In May 2005, ACDSA released a poll that found only 5.9 percent of those surveyed voted for opposition candidate Isa Gambar (official statistics gave Gambar 12 percent of the vote, and some foreign observers said that he garnered as much as 40 percent), and that 28.8 percent of those surveyed believed there was no corruption in Azerbaijan, a country ranked by Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index as 140 out of a worst of 145. Conducting joint exit polls for the 2004 municipal elections in Azerbaijan with another organization, the Center for Transparent Elections, ACSDA found that 99.85 percent of voters felt no pressure while voting. The two groups stated in their results that “violations and discrepancies of the voting procedure do not influence the final results of the voting,” pointing out that their exit poll corroborated with official results.

The Institute of War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) is also critical, and asks if concessions for the elections are too little, too late?

President Ilham Aliev last week stunned observers by allowing significant amendments to the electoral rules which had been demanded by international human rights organisations. He said that these changes would help assure a free and fair election on November 6.

Opposition members called the concessions too little, too late, and international watchdogs are already saying that the contest has been marred by gross violations, and is heavily biased in the government’s favour.

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The OSCE also faulted state-run AzTV television channel which, although it allocated free airtime to the four major political parties as required, devoted 97 per cent of its political coverage to the president, government and YAP. The TV station denied free airtime for the opposition Azadlig bloc altogether for three days during the chaotic aftermath of the failed return of opposition leader Rasul Guliyev, when top government officials were arrested on charges of planning a coup d’etat,

Human Rights Watch officials described the same violations as the OSCE, but added that these “extinguished the possibility of free and fair parliamentary elections on November 6”.

“The government is simply unwilling to allow a free and fair election,” said Holly Cartner, Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia director. “We are concerned that this could lead to a bloody crackdown against protesters.”

As Sunday approaches, it’s worth pointing out that Registan.net has extensive coverage of the elections, and Katy from Blogrel will be on the ground to blog her own experience of the conduct of the elections. It’s difficult to say what will happen on Sunday, although its interesting to note that whatever Armenians might say, and especially those in the Diaspora, many nationalists are hoping that the elections will receive a black mark from the international community.

Firstly, this is because it allows more ammunition to use against Azerbaijan dressed up in concerns over the state of democratization in Armenia’s arch enemy. However, any lack of progress allows the authorities in Armenia to breathe a sigh of relief. If the elections in Azerbaijan were to represent noticeable progress over the last ones, the pressure would be on President Kocharian to ensure a free and fair referendum on constitutional amendments at the end of the month, as well as democratic parliamentary elections in 2007.

For all our sakes in this region, I hope that the will of the people in Azerbaijan is reflected in the final tally of votes, and that if it isn’t, Azerbaijani society is able to protect their constitutionally defined right to elect their own parliament. Let’s see what will be.