A country aware of its past

BAKU, Azerbaijan â€” For the past few days I have been in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. I have been invited to be an election observer, courtesy of ICAPP (International Conference of Asian Political Parties) founder former Speaker Jose de Venecia. (He has now happily found a career that suits his political talents for achieving coalitions and reconciliations. This time it is in the international scene).  I hesitated a little about going to such an unknown far away place but then decided — why not? It is precisely because it is unknown to me and being such a far away place that I decided to go. It was an opportunity that may not come again in my shortening lifetime.

I have had to click my google buttons several times to know something about a country holding elections in a region I knew little about. A friend had recently sent me via Youtube Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia by mistake and it made me even more curious about Azerbaijan and its people.  It is not quite Central Asia but between West Asia and East Europe bounded on the north by Russia, on the south by Iran, on the east by Armenia and on the west by the Caspian sea — the home of the sturgeon that produces a delicacy that is becoming rarer and rarer — caviar.

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The election was, in a manner of speaking, an anomaly because it was widely regarded that Azerbaijan’s leader Ilham Aliyev would win hands down. I think of election as a contest but there was no contest here with the Opposition unable to put up a fight.

The election to me was more of an imprimatur on the incumbent president’s governance and a rag-tag opposition unable to put up a good fight. Elections are about putting up governments that can do the job of governing well. Ilham Aliyev has done well for his people. If he won their vote for a third term that is not necessarily suspect. A real electoral contest will happen only when the Opposition can demonstrate they can do better than Aliyev in running the country.

At the polling booths we visited and where I was able to talk to voters the overwhelming sentiment was that they would vote Aliyev to a third term. The process visible to us as watchers was straightforward. It used the manual system — voters lists are posted on a bulletin board, indelible spray (not ink) marked on the fingers of the voter, and ballots with the names of candidates, (President Aliyev came second on the list) are distributed. The voter then goes into curtained booths for the voters to vote in privacy. From there the voter drops his or her ballot in transparent plastic boxes for everyone to see. A BBC story said ballot boxes were stuffed with fraudulent votes but I cannot see how it could have been done with the boxes at the center of the room and about half a dozen watchers representing candidates, most of whom looked to me like no-nonsense teachers. At the exit were survey groups conducting exit polls. As a watcher group we came to the polling district at the beginning and again at the end before counting. The plastic boxes containing the votes remained where these where — at the center of the room. Being in transparent plastic boxes the level of the paper ballots registered an increase consistent with the number of ballots expected from 1,200 voters to 1,500 voters per district.

Whatever controversies there were about his government, the country was stable and wealthy thanks to the proper management of Azerbaijan’s gas and oil resources, interviewed voters said.  Indeed, it would be foolish if the people were happy with the way he ran the country that they should vote for someone who they did not know would run it as well.

I write this column the morning after the elections but in a few hours after voting closed there were cars on the streets honking horns to announce his victory. He thanked the people for voting him to a third term with more than 85% percent of the vote in his favor.  To me the novelty of the manual election compared to those in conducted previously in the Philippines was an overhead camera monitor that would record whatever was happening in each polling booth throughout the voting and counting period.

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Our hosts made sure that we would fall in love with this city by the Caspian Sea with what critics call the Azeris’ “caviar diplomacy.” Baku (meaning wind-pounded) reminded me very much of London and Paris – there were wide avenues like Champs Elysees and Park Lane. There were little streets dotted with little boutiques and lovely shop windows of the latest fashions as well as of their arts and crafts. In Baku, you can find some of the world’s most beautiful carpets. As our guide told us architects of the modern part of Baku came from Paris and London.

But the Azeris are especially fond of the Baku Flame Towers.  They see the towers as a symbol of their identity today: it is all about how to be an independent country after the Soviet era.

The Flame Towers is a masterpiece of modern technology but the story it tells comes from ancient times. This construct of three buildings in flames can be seen from many distances around the city. The feat was to create a spectacular design that would interpret Baku’s history of fire worship.

The three buildings comprise a 39-story residential tower, a Fairmont Hotel, and an office tower with more than 33,000 square meters of flexible, Class A commercial office space.

There is a retail podium for leisure and retail facilities for the three towers’ residents and visitors. The visual appearance of make-believe flames come from lights moving from building to building.

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Not far from the Baku Flame Towers was “The Walled City of Baku” sometimes referred to also as the Inner City. The Inner City is a historical complex of all the cultures that influenced the making of this city. Here lay the physical remains of the soul of Azerbaijan.

Every building told the story of how Zoroastrian, Sassanian, Arabic, Persian, Shirvani, Ottoman, and Russian cultures combined to make a mélange of what life had once been in Azerbaijan.