The authorities have no political will to hold free elections - Isa Gambar

Baku/07.04.21/Turan: The main obstacle to holding free, fair and democratic elections in the country is the lack of political will of the authorities. This opinion was expressed in an interview with the Voice of America by the head of the National Center for Strategic Thought Isa Gambar, commenting on the criticism of the US State Department about the human rights situation in Azerbaijan.

“The worst thing is that from election to election the situation is not only not improving, but worsening. In the last early parliamentary elections in February 2020, there were also no equal opportunities for participants.

By all indicators, the administrative resource was used to support the ruling party and pro-government candidates. There was extreme discrimination against the real opposition, especially the Musavat Party, which ran in the elections,” Gambar said.

A party with candidates in more than 60 constituencies is entitled by law to free airtime for election campaigning. In order to deprive Musavat of free airtime, only 59 candidates were registered from this party.

“The paid airtime was too expensive. There was no debate on television. Even the ruling party has given up airtime, which is absurd. The reason for this is that the government wanted there to be no debates, so that voters were not aware of the elections and remained indifferent to political processes,” Gambar said.

What reforms need to be carried out to ensure fair elections? Answering this question, Gambar said that if there is political will, normal elections could be held under the existing legislation.

However, in general, there is a need to improve the electoral code to create equal opportunities and competition, as stated in the report of the State Department.

“First of all, it is necessary to create conditions for the participation of representatives of leading political forces in election commissions. If the commissions have representatives of the authorities, then there should be representatives of the opposition,” Gambar continued.

In addition, opportunities for election monitoring should be enhanced so that observers and candidate-authorized representatives can actually observe the process.

To facilitate the conduct of elections according to the desired scenario, the authorities are increasing pressure on opposition parties, trying to discredit them, and are conducting propaganda about the alleged lack of readiness of society for democratic elections, he said. —16D-