Liberal Party Withstands Attacks

The Liberal Party of Azerbaijan (LPA) issued a statement, in which it rejected the attacks on the party and its leader, Lala Shevket, by a number of opposition media.

The statement is about information that LPA is allegedly blocking further nomination of the presidential candidate from the National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF).

In this regard, the Liberal Party recalls that the leader of the party "at the beginning of the year refused to participate in the upcoming presidential election, which makes absolutely incomprehensible the attacks against her personally."

Secondly, the Liberal Party, realizing the seriousness of the situation and the impasse, and the threat for the opposition leaders to stay out of the election process, offered a memorandum stating that all political leaders should waste no time and should be nominated as candidates from their parties and organizations. Accordingly, it would give carte blanche to all the political leaders to ensure that the National Council would support them after they were approved by CEC.

Third, on August 21 at an emergency meeting of chairpersons of the parties in the National Council, the Chairman of the Liberal Party Avaz Temirkhan invited the political leaders to agree by consensus among themselves, and to put forward a single candidate of the political leaders. He stressed that the Liberal Party will support any politician, on whom the choice will be made by consensus. "Presidential elections are a political process and in this critical situation, when there is very little time, we believed that the nomination of a single candidate in the person of a political leader would be more appropriate and justified. However, the party chairmen, and the members of the National Council flatly refused to discuss our proposals," the statement said. -06D-