Ilgar Mammadov: The authorities at the philosophical, conceptual level do not understand what a party is in the political system

Baku/06.12.22/Turan: “Fifty nine  political parties  have been registered in Azerbaijan. REAL is one of the parties that made proposals to change this legislation, and conceptually our proposals were that the legal significance of parties should depend primarily on the number of votes that the party receives in the elections,” Ilgar Mammadov, the head of REAL  told the journalist Yana Madatova, commenting on the bill "On political parties". The bill caused bewilderment in the political establishment and provoked fierce controversy.

“It doesn't matter at all how many people establish a party, how many members it has. If a party receives a decent number of votes in elections, nothing negative should happen to its legal status. Other proposals were also made.

Further, if a new law on political parties is to be adopted, then it is necessary that it does not worsen their legal status.

Several more important proposals were made, we submitted them for public discussion last year, that is, long before the drafting of the bill, and submitted it to Parliament. But our conceptual proposals were ignored,” says Ilgar Mammadov.

According to him, a draft law was published on September 7, which is absolutely reactionary and has nothing in common not only with democratic, but even with republican values.

“REAL sharply opposed it, after which there was a discussion in the Milli Majlis, a round table, and we were assured that there would be several such roundtables for discussion with political parties. But only one was held, at which we expressed our attitude to this bill. After that,  on November 20, following the results of these supposedly "discussions", a somewhat softened, but still essentially reactionary version of the bill was submitted to the Parliament for consideration. It again worsens the legal position of political parties and makes them dependent on endless, innumerable procedural norms. In practice, this fundamental, theoretical, political and philosophical connection between elections and the political status of parties disappears. It is not included in this bill. When we saw the updated version, we raised the topic of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe - a legal body that gives governments, member states opinions, opinions on certain bills. Why did we bring this topic up? Because in their presentations, the authors of the draft law said that they allegedly took into account the opinions or conclusions, recommendations of the Venice Commission, and the public got the impression that the Venice Commission even approved this bill. I knew that this was not so, and therefore, on behalf of the chairman of the party, I turned to the Council of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and received a response. It indicated that there was nothing of the kind, and not only the Venice Commission, but also other responsible bodies of the Council of Europe involved in coordinating these issues, did not take part in any discussions with the Azerbaijani state on this bill. Thus, one myth was destroyed that supposedly this bill is "supported" by the Council of Europe. After that, we, as a political party, tried to initiate consideration of the draft law by the Venice Commission (VC). I note that the VC does not give opinions on certain projects on any request. Requests can be given by the government, PACE or its committees. Our MP Erkin Gadirli is a member of the PACE Legal Affairs Committee on Human Rights. It was in that capacity that he raised the subject in the Committee. The Committee has the right to submit a request to the Venice Commission on such a topic only if the Committee has a related topic related to Azerbaijan on the agenda. And since there is none today, the legal committee announced the impossibility at the moment of submitting a request to the Venice Commission. After that, I personally applied to one of the members of the PACE monitoring committee, which has the right to submit a request to the Venice Commission for the so-called "urgent opinion". And after our discussion, a member of the monitoring committee promised to raise this issue on December 14 right at the meeting of the monitoring committee. After that, we continued discussions and now we are considering the possibility of the monitoring committee hurrying up, since our authorities are very quickly pushing the bill through the Milli Majlis. By the way, the meeting of the monitoring committee can be held online. The government, of course, knows about all this, and as soon as they saw our activity, they immediately submitted the bill for the first reading in parliament and immediately adopted it. The only MP who voted against was Erkin Gadirli, the only MP from REAL in the Milli Majlis. Naturally, the authorities are in a hurry, and naturally they will try to pass this law in three readings before the end of the month. We, in turn, will use the instruments of Azerbaijan's international obligations in order to influence the process of adopting the law.

The authorities often talk about dialogue, and, of course, there is dialogue between us, but more like a “hot line” than a dialogue. And on this issue, they do not listen to us, and they push through the law on political parties in the most reactionary form. Again, the main question: Why can't you count the votes that this or that party receives? Why are you shifting the burden of measuring the strength of a particular party from the shoulders of the CEC to political parties. Why do we have to register 5,000 members and update this register every year? Why is all this necessary?

Suppose we only have 3 or 4 members but we get half a million votes. What are the legal consequences of such a situation?

The authorities at the philosophical and conceptual level do not understand what a party is in the political system. They think that the party system is a ministry of political parties, and each party in it will be a department of one direction or another. This is the “philosophy” underlying this bill! That is why we categorically reject it and will try to get the Venice Commission to express its opinion on this matter, despite the efforts of the government to prevent such an opinion from appearing. We use every legal and political opportunity to obstruct the authorities in their efforts to pass this law.

We are well aware that the only thing we can do now is to activate the mechanism of Azerbaijan's international obligations. Our competence is sufficient for this at the moment. Let's see to what point all these actions will reach, and then we will make a decision.

There is one global problem in Azerbaijan: our ministers are not politicians. Do you understand? They are formally members of some party, perhaps even the ruling one. Most of them are managers, by the nature of what they do. There are no those who are actually involved in managing and implementing the political course, fighting for their point of view, proving it in public discussions ... And there are a lot of such distortions in the political system of Azerbaijan. And the new law on political parties will add even more curvature to the general political system.

The main drawback of this law is over-regulation. What is it for? If, for example, the exchange rate is regulated in excess of the norm, then a black currency market will appear. If the price is regulated beyond the norm, speculation will appear. If, however, over-regulation of political parties is started, then people will not engage in politics in a party format, but will establish a “literary club”, which will act exactly as a club of interests. But not more! The classic example is Lech Walesa, he did not have a political party in socialist Poland. Vaclav Havel was a writer, he also did not have a political party. By the way, in Poland, and in Hungary, and in the GDR (Democratic German Republic) there were several political parties even in socialist times! They want to impose on us the kind of political system that existed in Eastern Europe during the era of socialism. But then they will get mass movements in a non-party format, which can shake Azerbaijan quite strongly, especially if this happens simultaneously with some kind of economic difficulties.

As you understand, our country, the current political elite, and our opponents are not interested in such a development. We want a civilized political struggle, joint work, so that it would be possible to engage in politics in a party format. Otherwise, people will engage in politics without parties. And what it is fraught with - I have already said. It turns out that we will be obliged to go and register with the Ministry of Justice annually, and so on. The whole law is literally stuffed with the spirit that people are guilty of being in politics! Presumption of guilt in relation to politics. It shouldn't be like this! A politician, a party leader is just as important a person in managing the country's political system as a ministry, government, parliament and the state as a whole. This is the most important institution of the democratic structure of our state. The law also demonstrates the presumption of guilt.

When I was conditionally released from prison, I went to the probation service every 10 days to check in, because in the view of the authorities then I was a criminal who was released and had to be constantly checked in by the Department of the Ministry of Justice. I see the same thing now: the attitude towards representatives of political parties in the country, according to the law that they are going to approve, is similar. Political activity is a crime, or a potential crime.