Power of Nasimi and Narimanov districts ignore Civic Forum

 A civil forum on Friday under the "Civic participation and accountability of elected officials" was on the  relationship of citizens and local authorities. The project is implemented by the  Election Monitoring and Democratic Studies Center  (EMDSC) supported by the European Commission and the U.S. National Democratic Institute (NDI.) 

The purpose of the program is promoting citizen participation in decisions taken by public authorities.

"In democratic countries an important role is given to  citizens’ participation in decision-making at the local and national level," said Javid Nabiyev , regional manager  of EMDSC.

According to him, civic forums and workshops were held in  10 regions on the legal enlightenment of  citizens, the ways of making  applications to municipal and state agencies, the nomination of collective decision-making, etc.

Today's forum was devoted to the relationship of citizens with the local authorities in the Nasimi and Narimanov districts of the capital. The representatives of municipalities and regional administrations in these areas have been invited to the forum. However, no one of the local power structures of  Narimanov  district  has come to the event, and  from the Nasimi district, only one representative of the municipality,- Naila Ismayilov, has come. From the very beginning of the meeting  she received with hostility  the report on the rights of citizens, saying all know about it. This remark caused discontent in the hall. "You can not go to schools and universities, because everything is written in the books," commented ironically one of the participants.

Then a resident  of Narimanov  district, Vugar Abbasov, said that problems of people in their district on the Khoysky  street are not resolved, there is no heating, garbage is not removed, there are shortages of other utilities. "We have repeatedly appealed to the district executive, a municipality, our deputy Adil Aliyev, but no actions are  taken,"  said Abbasov.

Another resident  of Narimanov district  complained  of  piles of garbage, which is not removed. The question from one of the participants,  if this resident participated in the elections and for whom he voted, caused his anger. After that, a number of "active" citizens left the hall togther with the  representative of the Nasimi municipality.     

Executive Director of  EMDSC, Bashir Suleymanli, said that in all regions of representatives of municipalities and authorities behave in this way. "It's done on purpose, because they do not want the citizens to know their rights,"- said Suleymanli.  Then the forum was held in a calm and constructive atmosphere, and the participants were presented practical information on citizen participation in government decision-making: the right to participate in elections as voters, candidates, members of the commission, observers, on the nomination of the initiatives, the creation of district committees, petitions , conduct local surveys, collecting signatures, nomination and other legislative initiatives, etc.—06C-