Azerbaijan: no opposition, no rally

The Azerbaijani opposition failed to organize an unsanctioned rally on April, 2 in Baku. Only couple of hundred people took part in the event, trying to escape the police while shouting slogans. The authorities sanctioned a rally, but the opposition didn’t want to accept the place offered by the capital’s administration and preferred a direct confrontation with the authorities.

The exact scenario of these recent events isn’t as important as the question whether the opposition is at all capable of destabilizing the political situation in the country.  It is obvious, that the radical opposition doesn’t have the resources to do that.

Almost all experts concur that there’s no social base for this so-called opposition, and they are unlikely to get one any time soon. The leaders of the present day opposition are the same people who failed to govern the country in 1993 and had to ask Heydar Aliev to save the state. The same people tried to discredit Ilham Aliev’s electoral campaign and then failed to present themselves as emissaries of ‘colour revolution’ in Azerbaijan.

Today, following the new revolutionary wave in Arab counties Azerbaijani opposition decided to take another chance. However, the present day situation in Baku has nothing in common with the situation that led to revolution’s success in Tunisia and Egypt. The political elite of Azerbaijan was replenished by new active politicians in Ilham Aliev’s time, politicians who now how to govern the country, while opposition leaders remained the same, who can’t agree on anything among themselves, much less to support innovation and reforms.

The leaders of the two parties who tried to organize the rally in question didn’t even show up to address the people who followed their call and took part in the demonstration. Radicals became political outcasts who have no support and no future in Azerbaijani politics. So there can be no doubt that they are unable to assume any place of power in the country. Some experts say that the events of April, 2 can’t be classified as a rally, and they were not an attempt to claim power, but just a reminder of the opposition’s existence.

Evgueny Krishtalev. Exclusively to VK