Deputy Head of Azerbaijan`s Presidential Administration: Those who consider democracy an important value must themselves set an example to others
Mr. Mammadov what can you say about almost identical nature of the position of the ODIHR and the U.S. on the Presidential elections held in Azerbaijan?
State Department’s statement dated 9 October 2013 on the elections in Azerbaijan is unjust and fails to reflect the reality.
This position demonstrates that OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights together with the U.S. have monopolized the issue of democracy and human rights and manipulate it as per they wish.
It is evident however, that employing democracy and human rights issues as an instrument of pressure proves to be unsuccessful. Tens of such examples can be cited in the international community.
Presidential elections in Azerbaijan are no way falling behind the ones held in other countries, and are even advanced based on many parameters. In light of subjective assessments by the very ODIHR and the U.S. on the elections held elsewhere and marred by serious legal violations and flaws, their biased position evokes surprise and astonishment.
Those who view democracy as a great value must adhere to the democratic principles and lead by example. Interestingly, most of the 1500 observers from 98 countries and 48 international institutions, including observation missions of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization, Parliamentary Assembly of the Turkic Speaking Countries, as well as independent foreign observers have expressed positive position on the elections. For some reason those opinions were ignored in the position of the U.S. State Department.
Just and transparent assessments made by the U.S. Congressmen and Senators elected by the ordinary American people, and also those of other elected officials do not coincide with the utterly critical opinion of the State Department.
People of Azerbaijan expressed their will. This choice has been clearly recognized in the pre and post election evaluations and "exit-polls" conducted by various international observation missions, experts, and U.S. and European institutions. Thereby, position of ODIHR and the U.S. denotes disrespect to the will and the rights of the people that had taken part in the elections. It would be sufficed to stress that dismissal in the ODIHR report of the assessments with regards to the elections made by Michel Voisin, the Head of the OSCE short-term observation mission, symbolizes bias. Does not it imply total violation of democratic principles?
In the meantime, it was made clear that most of the members of the ODIHR observation mission lacked experience in this field. Unlike ODIHR, observation missions of the PACE, OSCE PA, CIS PA and BSEC PA were all made of experts specializing in the electoral process.
Thus, it may be concluded that it was done intentionally. Deployment of people with no knowledge of the electoral process and incapable of producing a position on this issue was a step to ensure the adoption of a predetermined final opinion.
OSCE and the U.S. that so frequently mention international obligations of Azerbaijan owed to them must not forget about theirs owed to Azerbaijan. Nevertheless, they have failed to make a single step in the direction of fulfillment of their obligations and hardly consider taking any.
Regrettably, such an attitude questions the expediency of inviting OSCE to partake in the future electoral processes.
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