H.Hajizade: there is not an environment in Azerbaijan where intelligence could be brought up

Azerbaijani society is not to blame for the apparent indifference to politics, said Hikmet Hajizade, President of FAR Center and political scientist, in an interview to Objective TV (obyektiv.tv).

According to him, in normal conditions, videos by the former rector of International University, Elshad Abdullayev, showing the nature of the local parliamentary system, law enforcement and judicial system, must have caused a negative reaction in the general population. In fact, only a few hundred young people organized pickets, and other protest actions.  The rest say "smart" things like "we knew it", or, "it could not be different way," etc.

Close to the same reaction to these videos, was from the country’s political elite. One of the pro-government newspapers "branded" by abusive verses and curses of former deputy Gular Akhmedov, but not for her attempt to sell a deputy's mandate, and not for state treason, but for the fact that she ironically treated Ali Akhmedov, the deputy chairman of the ruling party.  Now the party members are silently waiting for a signal from the top.  If there is an order they will  "branded",  if not, they will keep silent.

According to Hajizade, this is a relapse to historical governing of Azerbaijan. In the beginning, there was eastern despotism, then the czarist regime, then Soviet totalitarianism, and now practices of those who are out of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Union  (CPSU.) They all act like Gular Akhmedova, participating in political speculation. It is noteworthy to mention the video in which the former chairman of the Narimanov district court, Agababa Babayev, conducted the trial of weaning property of Zulfugarli brothers. He admits that they robbed $5 million from the brother Zulfugarli, and sent them abroad, but, in his view, the problem is not the unfair system itself, but the fact that the judge was given nothing from that amount. The judge is guided by thieves’ category, when all the "accomplices" are paid for participation, and the government of Azerbaijan ignores even these concepts.

Citizens and interests of society are not taken into account; otherwise, they would have reacted somehow to the compromising material in foreign media about the $48 billion in offshore areas, about the mansions in Arab countries belonging to young members of the family of President Ilham Aliyev, etc. In Azerbaijan there is not an environment to bring up intellectuals, “the hero"  of the corruption video, Gular Akhmedova, teaches at Baku State University, universities that serve for collecting money and distributing diplomas.  During Soviet times there was "red chair", when workers without education led the ideologically "immature" scientists in universities and institutes. Now we see the same picture.  If you think "right," in the spirit of the "new Azeris", you can be the owner of academic titles and professorial positions.

Democracy is not a prize; the whole of society wins it for centuries.  The French, since conquering the Bastille to the end of the reign of Charles de Gaulle, had changed five republics; the British fought against royal regime for over 700 years, until they came to a satisfactory level of political governance. In today's world, there are examples of Mahatma Gandhi, Vaclav Havel, the leaders of national consciousness. Society attains to the level of these people, and its indignation turns into the revolution and democratic changes, the analyst believes. --17D—