Azerbaijan - Elections 2018
A decree issued by the office of President Ilham Aliyev on 05 February 2018 said Azerbaijan has brought forward the date of a planned presidential election to 11 April 2018 from October 17. Azerbaijan's strongman Ilham Aliyev called a snap presidential vote for April, six months ahead of schedule, as opposition politicians slammed the surprise move. If re-elected in 2018, the 55-year-old Aliyev could extend his rule till 2025.
In 2009, Aliyev amended the country's constitution so he could run for an unlimited number of presidential terms, in a move criticised by rights advocates who say he could become a president for life. In 2016, Azerbaijan adopted controversial constitutional amendments, extending the president's term in office to seven years from five. On 11 February 2017 President Aliyev appointed his wife Mehriban to the role of first vice president. Voters cleared the way for the creation of the offices of vice president and first vice president in a referendum on Azerbaijan's constitution in 2016. While the position of first vice president is more senior to that of vice president, it is currently unclear what duties 52-year-old Mehriban Aliyeva would undertake.
Aliyev, in power since succeeding his father Heydar Aliyev in 2003, had been nominated as the ruling party's candidate for the election for what would be his fourth term. "Set the date of the election of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan on April 11," Aliyev ordered in a decree posted on his website without providing an immediate explanation for the move. The oil-rich country was initially set to hold the vote on October 17.
"No-one knows what the true reason for calling a snap vote is," political anayst Hikmet Hadjizade said. The decision sparked strong criticism from opposition parties. "The Aliyevs have been in power for some 45 years already and that contradicts the principles of a democratic republic," the leader of the opposition Popular Front party, Ali Kerimli, said. The veteran politician said the decision to hold early elections was aimed at shortening the campaign period and "hampering the opposition's efforts to prevent vote rigging".
So far, two opposition candidates - Musavat party leader Isa Gambar and the chairman of the Classical Popular Front Party Mirmahmud Miralioglu - have announced plans to run for president.
Supporters have praised the Aliyevs for turning a republic once thought of as Soviet backwater into a flourishing energy supplier to Europe. But critics argue they have crushed the opposition and used their power to amass a fortune that funds a lavish lifestyle for the president and his family.
"Ilham Aliyev is clinging on to power to continue appropriating the country's riches," Khadija Ismayilova, an award-winning journalist and anti-corruption crusader, said. "Practically all of Azerbaijan's natural and economic resources are under the Aliyev family's control," said the journalist who had spent 17 months in jail in 2014-2016.
Azerbaijan is locked in a bitter dispute with Armenia over separatist Nagorny Karabakh region, which has been under Armenian control since it was seized during a bloody conflict in the early 1990s after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Energy-rich Azerbaijan, whose military spending exceeds Armenia's entire state budget, has repeatedly threatened to take back the breakaway region by force. The long-ruling president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, took an incredible 86 percent of the vote in the first round of the country’s presidential election 11 April 2018, winning outright another seven years in the post he inherited from his father, Heydar Aliyev, when the elder Aliyev died in 2003. As was typical for the Azerbaijani leader in election years, before the election the constitution was changed, allowing him another, longer term in office (seven years instead of the previous term of five years, while originally no more than two terms as president were allowed). The constitutional shenanigans were combined with arrests of political opponents. Out of eight candidates, six of them were campaigning for Aliyev. Fake opponents were required because the main opposition parties had decided to boycott the election in protest at it being moved forward.
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