Four Azeri MPs –Samad Seyidov, Sevinj Fataliyeva, Sahiba Gafarova, -- members of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party -- and Asim Mollazade, a Chairman of the Democratic Reforms Party, showed up in Washington DC on Thursday to speak about Azerbaijan’s domestic and geopolitical challenges in front of majority of Azeri lobbyists, at the launch that was organized by The Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of Jon Hopkins University.
The event, however, turned out to be nothing rather than a political show, TURAN’s Washington DC correspondent reports.
The MPs, while presenting themselves as each other’s opponents, and staging a “discussion” with variety of opinions, ruled out any of the current outraging events in Azerbaijan, as well as the problems such as human rights, media and other freedoms that were recently on the international watchdogs’ radar…
Speaking about the foreign policy, both Seyidov and Mollazade mentioned that Azerbaijan is “completely independent” from all the powers and pursues its own political course, although “it’s not widely understood by the outsiders…”
The threat to the country comes from “North and South”, Seyidov mentioned, adding, that Azerbaijan is being pressed “like a sandwich” because of its “desire to be closer to the US”.
Specially, human rights, he said, “being used as an instrument of pressure against the country”.
“My president is under pressure, as we have seen an external influence on the country in the election year”, - he said, adding by Mollazade that the most dangerous people in Azerbaijan “are from Iran”.
On the domestic front, all the MPs agreed on Azerbaijan’s “building free media and strong civil society”.
The recent Baku rallies were met with oppression by the police “because they weren’t confirmed with the local mayor’s office; otherwise, no such cases would have happened in Azerbaijan”, Seyidov said.
Speaking of the Council of Europe’s recent report on political prisoners in the country, he added, the draft was “unsuccessful”, as it included among others, “the names of those who were planning to blow up the US and Israeli embassies in Baku.”
Mollazade, in his part, expressed solidarity with Seyidov, while presenting his opinion as “the voice of opposition”.
His conclusions were that “it is time for the new generation to come to politics, including giving more eats to the parliament to the youth and women”.
Another topic that the MPs played around was corruption. While both “admitted” the problem, they also agreed that the fight against it, is “on top priority of the government”… It was unclear, however, who are the performers of corruption in this case…
Alakbar Raufoglu
Washington, DC
03/14/2013
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