Voters go to the polls today to vote in a controversial referendum as oil-rich Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev Aliyev becomes the latest “petro-president” to consolidate his grip on power by abolishing term limits. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez secured the necessary constitutional amendments last month, the Kazakh parliament lifted presidential term limits in 2007, and the Kremlin has also proposed changes to Russia’s constitutional constraints on successive presidential terms.
Term limits are a feature of every consolidated democracy and widely considered to be a key constitutional guarantee of genuine prospects for the alternation of power as well as a safeguard against entrenched corruption. But recent moves against term limits are creating worrying precedents. “If you have a bunch of countries move in one direction, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other semi-democratic countries move in the same direction,” notes one analyst.
The ruling Yeni (New) Azerbaijan Party has proposed lifting the two-term presidential limit to allow Aliyev to run for election after his second term expires in 2013. Opposition leaders called on voters to stay home but early indications suggest a high turnout and the amendment is likely to win approval after Aliyev secured 89 percent in the albeit flawed presidential election in October 2008.
The authorities have been accused of bussing voters to polling stations, and unofficial observers claimed that some citizens voted multiple times. “If turnout is low, members of the election commission will take care of it,” a polling station chief in Baku admitted to RFE/RL. “They’ve already spoken to voters. When we need them to come vote, the local officials will organize their delivery and bring them over.“
“Broad public-political debates and voter education ….did not take place” in the run-up to the referendum, according to the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center’s interim report released today. The center cites constraints on freedom of assembly, expression and media, insufficient time for campaigning and a paucity of public meetings or debates with voters.
Democracy and human rights activists cite curbs on media and freedom of association as evidence of the regime’s growing authoritarianism. The government’s human rights record remained poor and worsened over the last year, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2008 report on human rights practices. “The public’s right to peacefully change the government was restricted in the October presidential election, it notes, and cites torture of persons in police and military custody; arbitrary arrest and detention, particularly of political opponents; imprisonment persons for politically motivated reasons; pervasive corruption; restrictions on freedom of assembly; pressure on the media; and worsening restrictions on political participation.
“We can write, we can read, we can watch. But we have no voice,” said a refugee from the war of the early 1990s in Azerbaijan’s rebel Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Observers suggest that the referendum is designed to bolster the regime in anticipation of an economic downturn prompted by the depressed price of oil.
[...] Critics, as well as blogs such as Democracy Digest, warned that the referendum was not only paving the way for Aliyev to consolidate power, but to also retain the presidency indefinitely. [...]