AUG. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Election Committee disqualified Rustam Ibragimbekov, a well-known screenwriter, from standing as the main opposition candidate in a presidential election. Mr Ibragimbekov holds dual Azerbaijan-Russia citizenship, illegal under the election rules.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
SEPT. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch, the New York-based lobby group, accused Azerbaijan’s government of “a deliberate, abusive strategy to limit dissent”. It also said that this campaign against dissenters and opposition activists was intensifying in the run up to the Oct. 9 election.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s parliament called a presidential election for Nov. 6. Incumbent president, Emomali Rakhmon, is expected to win a large victory and another seven-year term. He has ruled Tajikistan since the end of a civil war in the mid-1990s. Critics say the election will be a one-sided farce.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s economy will grow by only 4% this year, a drop from 6.5% in 2012, because of concerns over political instability, media said quoting the IMF. Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man, won a surprise victory in a parliamentary election in 2012. A presidential election is scheduled for Oct. 27.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
SEPT. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In the end, Rustam Ibragimbekov’s bid to dislodge Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev from power didn’t even make it to election day on Oct. 9.
The country’s Central Election Committee disqualified the 74-year-old Oscar winning screenwriter on Aug. 27 for holding dual Azerbaijan-Russia citizenship.
Holding dual citizenship is clearly against election rules in Azerbaijan and Mr Ibragimbekov’s disqualification will be an embarrassment for the main secular opposition group.
It had been working hard to build momentum around the popular Mr Ibragimbekov. Now it has to start again.
Mr Ibragimbekov’s replacement is Camil Hasanli, a respected academic who teaches at Baku State University and used to be an independent MP.
Mr Hasanli, 61, may be a respected historian but he doesn’t have the same public persona, inside and outside Azerbaijan, as Mr Ibragimbekov.
What the candidate switch does do, though, is perhaps underline one of the main opposition group’s weaknesses. The impression it gives is of a movement built for the country’s Soviet-era intelligentsia, rather than being a vigorous opposition movement spanning Azerbaijan’s different social strata.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s opposition has picked Camil Hasanli, a prominent Baku history professor, as a reserve candidate to stand in October’s presidential election.
The main opposition group was forced to confer this unusual status on Mr Hasanli, 69, because Rustam Ibragimbekov, the opposition’s preferred candidate and a well-known Oscar winning sceenwriter, is likely to be disqualified later this week from standing in the election.
Mr Ibragimbekov holds joint Azerbaijan-Russia citizenship which, under the election rules, is illegal.
Mr Ibragimbekov appears to have either not realised his dual citizenship could be a problem or not been prepared to relinquish it in time to officially register for the election.
Conspiracy theorists also allege that, as a favour to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Russian officials have slowed up the process to cancel Mr Ibragimbekov’s Russian citizenship.
Either way, it looks bad for Azerbaijan’s opposition.
Making a dent in Mr Aliyev’s grip over Azerbaijan in the election was going to be difficult enough — he is running for his third term after 10 years in power and is almost guaranteed a large victory — but now it will be even harder.
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(News report from Issue No. 149, published on Aug. 26 2013)
AUG. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian PM Bidzina Ivanishvili pulled his TV station Channel-9 off the air. Mr Ivanishvili had said he wants to distance himself from media ahead of a presidential election in October. Channel-9 had been strongly critical of Mr Ivanishili’s rival, the incumbent Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
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(News report from Issue No. 149, published on Aug. 26 2013)
AUG. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to burnish his democratic credentials, Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov resigned as the head of the ruling Democratic Party. Turkmenistan holds a parliamentary election in December and Mr Berdymukhamedov said he didn’t want to influence it. In reality both parties competing in the election are pro-presidential.
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(News report from Issue No. 148, published on Aug. 19 2013)
AUG. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A pre-election spending spree on various social projects will push Azerbaijan into a budget deficit for the first time in a decade, Bloomberg quoted the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s as saying. Azerbaijan’s presidential election is scheduled for October. Ilham Aliyev is running for a third consecutive term.
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(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)
JULY 24 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Three months before a presidential election, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev gave 155 journalists apartments in a new Baku housing block. Critics of the president said the move was a crude effort to manipulate the media.
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(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)
