About Structural Changes in Presidential Administration

Baku / 01.12.19 / Turan: Recent global changes in the presidential administration have affected all departments of this country's main governing body, with the exception of only one.

Several departments were liquidated, in all the rest there were reductions in the rank and file, or their leaders were replaced.

These changes did not affect only the division for territorial and organizational issues. Thus, we can talk about strengthening the position of the head of this department, Zeynal Nagdaliyev. He had significant powers before, which caused jealousy of the former head of the administration, Ramiz Mehdiyev, who tried to torpedo Nagdaliyev’s decisions as much as possible.

There are many cases when the personnel decisions of Nagdaliyev were sabotaged by Mehdiyev and presented as “erroneous” and blamed on him. For example, several appointments were blocked by Mehdiyev on the grounds that Nagdaliyev’s candidatures were “unreliable”. The reason for this was the information of special services that relatives or friends of the candidates communicate with opposition-minded journalists or activists in social networks. However, the true reason for blocking the candidates was Mehdiyev’s desire to monopolize all appointments in the administration.

Periodically, information about the “erroneous” personnel policy of Nagdaliyev appeared in the press, which was already a matter of another leader of the “Nakhchivan clan,” Ali Hasanov.

This tandem for many years prevented the coming of young cadres not of their own clan to the administration.

The last blow, or rather the rout of Ali Hasanov’s department, to a certain extent, became an assessment of all his “merits” by the leadership.

In the fight for control over the administration, the Mehdiyev-Hasanov tandem did not hesitate to "drown" competitors by labeling them agents of the West or Russia, supporters of Fethullah Gulen or the Azerbaijani opposition.

The main role in this campaign of blackening was played by the media and TV channels controlled by Ali Hasanov, as well as an army of trolls in social networks.

Largely due to such "ideological" work, the image of Azerbaijan was inflicted huge damage. The latest evidence of this failure was the sending abroad of a person with a criminal past under the guise of a blogger and his public debate with the Armenian Prime Minister in Milan.

The lumpenization of society, moral degradation with the active use of television channels and the media is the most noticeable legacy that the Hasanov-Mehdiyev tandem left to society. Will we free ourselves from this?    -0-