OCT. 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan may consider privatising its postal service, Azerpost, information minister, Ali Abasov, told journalists. Mr Abasov said that Azerpost’s performance had been poorer than expected. There are roughly 1,500 post offices in Azerbaijan providing a variety of services.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Ilham Aliyev was sworn in as Azerbaijan’s president for his third five-year term despite protests from opposition groups that the Oct. 9 election was flawed. The ceremony took place in the Azerbaijani parliament after the constitutional court confirmed Mr Aliyev’s election victory with 85% of the vote.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Three days after being sworn in for his third term as Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev. replaced his long-serving defence minister General Safar Abiyev. Gen Abiyev had been defence minister since 1995. Opposition figures have accused him of corruption.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hundreds of ethnic Russians in a suburb of Moscow rioted against migrant workers from the South Caucasus and Central Asia. The trigger for the violence was the alleged murder of a Russian man by an Azerbaijani. Remittances from migrant workers are vital to the economies of Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
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(News report from Issue No. 156, published on Oct. 16 2013)
OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In the end, it pretty much went to script. Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s 51-year-old leader, won his third presidential election on Oct. 9 with 85 percent of the vote; Western observer said the vote was flawed; the opposition called on their supporters to protest.
None of this is remarkable because elections in Azerbaijan have tended to follow this script.
But, there were still some important characteristics worth considering.
For a start, Mr Aliyev didn’t take part in debates with other candidates and didn’t really bother to campaign.
Then there was the, apparent, early release of the election results on an official iPad app.
The Azerbaijani authorities said the app, which appeared to leak results the day before voting even began, was simply a poorly timed test.
The main opposition group also ran a stuttering campaign. They switched candidates at the last minute because their preferred candidate failed to qualify for the vote.
Perhaps most importantly, though, the OSCE, Europe’s main media freedom and election watchdog said the vote was flawed. It said there had been numerous accounts of voter intimidation and irregularities. Then again, Azerbaijan has never held an election considered free and fair.
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(News report from Issue No. 156, published on Oct. 16 2013)
OCT. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — One of the features of Azerbaijan’s oil boom has been its parallel armaments boom. As Azerbaijan’s economy has grown, so has its expenditure on weapons.
And 2014, according to media reports, is not going to be an exception. The Azerbaijani state budget forecasts spending 1.6b manat ($2b) on weapons next year, a 7% increase on 2013.
Azerbaijan is still at war, officially anyway, with Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is clearly winning the arms race with its neighbour and biggest enemy.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) has estimated that in real terms, taking out inflation and currency fluctuations, Azerbaijan’s military spending has increased ten-fold since 2000. Armenia has doubled defence spending in the same period.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 4 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The number of people with consumer loans in Azerbaijan has doubled in the past year to 1.75m, roughly 18% of the population, Eurasianet reported. It said that banks have been increasingly eager to hand out loans, relaxing barriers and paperwork. Some analysts have warned that the consumer boom is unaffordable.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tax revenues from Azerbaijan’s non-oil sector increased by 11.3% in the first nine months of 2013, Azerbaijani minister for economic development Shahin Mustafayev said according to media reports. International economists have said it is vital Azerbaijan develops its non-oil sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — International human rights groups have been lining up to criticise the run up to Azerbaijan’s presidential election on Oct. 9. In a new report, London-based Amnesty International described the situation for media and human rights workers as a “downward spiral of oppression”.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan will increase spending on military kit again next year, media reported quoting the national budget. Since 2000, Azerbaijan, with its oil and gas fuelled economy, has increased spending on military equipment 10-fold.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)