Orange That Inspired Ukraine Scarcely Visible in Azerbaijan

BAKU, Azerbaijan -- By Nov. 6, Election Day in Azerbaijan, a small room off the customs area at Heydar Aliyev International Airport was packed with satellite equipment seized from reporters arriving to cover the vote. "Can you send live pictures with this?" a polite customs inspector asked one foreign broadcast journalist after he landed with satellite equipment. "Then I'm afraid it's not allowed."

Also barred from the country that weekend were a group of election observers and youth activists from neighboring Ukraine, whose street uprising known as the Orange Revolution had become a source of inspiration for Azerbaijan's opposition. Any indication of a rigged vote would galvanize the population to take to the streets to demand political power, as people did in Ukraine, opposition figures here predicted.

It was, however, not to be. The airport controls were merely small last moves in a months-long campaign that had already boxed in President Ilham Aliyev's rivals. The government also made some democratic concessions and never let its strong-arm tactics get strong enough to completely alienate its allies -- the United States and European Union. Before a vote was cast, the opposition already had been checkmated.

In the end, this mix of tactics, applied against an inherently weak opposition, made Azerbaijan infertile ground for the kind of popular revolts that toppled post-Soviet governments in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan in addition to Ukraine in the past two years.

In 15 years of independence, Azerbaijan, a Muslim, energy-rich country nestled between Russia and Iran, has never had an election that international monitors considered largely free and fair. But this time, Aliyev promised, the vote would win praise abroad.

Estranged from Russia, which keeps close ties with Armenia, Azerbaijan's rival, Aliyev has embraced the United States. He sent troops to Iraq, allowed the Pentagon to put radar installations on his territory, and oversaw construction of a pipeline to Turkey that will move Azerbaijan's rich oil deposits to Western consumers.

"We have indivisible interests here," a U.S. Embassy official said on condition of anonymity. "Security, democracy and energy."

As elections for the 125-seat parliament approached, the president and his ruling party attempted to balance Western demands for fairer political competition with a need to keep the opposition and domestic opinion in line. "Every step is a calculation," said Arastun Orujlu, chairman of the East-West Research Center in Baku. "How much to give, how much to take, and how will the West react."

In a series of presidential decrees, Aliyev committed himself to fair balloting, including the inking of voters' fingers to prevent them from voting more than once. Opposition voices were allowed on an independent TV station, ANS. Foreign non-governmental organizations were allowed to work with candidates and parties.

At the same time, police violently broke up unsanctioned opposition rallies and harassed youth activists. Hundreds of candidates were pressured to remove their names from the ballot, political analysts said. Government officials told rural residents to vote the government's way or risk losing access to water and electricity.

After polling places closed on Nov. 6, official results showed an overwhelming victory for Aliyev's party and its allies. But monitors from the 55-country Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the vote was marred by widespread fraud.

State television, the major source of news for many people in the country, simply ignored the report from the most prestigious foreign group to monitor the election. Instead, television concentrated on the positive verdicts of other observers invited in by the Central Election Commission, including delegations from Iran, Turkey and the United States.