As Azerbaijan gears up for parliamentary elections on Nov. 6, the main question is whether the country is about to undergo its own "color" revolution, along the lines of those that have overthrown post-Soviet elites in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in the last two years. Such an outcome cannot be ruled out, but the prospects are uncertain at best.
Azerbaijan's ruling party, Eni Azerbaijan, faces challenges all around, despite the support of President Ilham Aliyev and privileged access to state resources. At least three opposition parties -- Isa Gambar's "Mussavat," Ala Keremela's "The National Front and the Social Democratic Party -- have maintained support and political influence since Ilham succeeded his late father, Heydar Aliyev, in 2003.
Moreover, like Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, dynastic politics in Azerbaijan reflects the dominance of clans whose members' success is determined by proximity to the president. While such systems may appear stable, they are inherently fragile, for they are synonymous with lawlessness, injustice and abject poverty for the majority of the population.
The opposition has already started preparing the ground for change. The leaders of the three-party opposition bloc, Azadlyg (Freedom), have declared that they will regard any electoral outcome that gives opposition parties less than 70 percent of the vote as having been falsified, and that street protests would follow. This would conform to the pattern seen in Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine last year.
But can such a scheme work in Azerbaijan? A "dress rehearsal" failed in October two years ago, when the opposition, incapable of uniting around a single candidate to challenge Ilham in the presidential election, declared the results to have been falsified and called people into the streets. Only several hundred showed up, and the police quickly dispersed them, arresting dozens.
This time, the opposition is united, having found it far easier to agree on mutual support for 125 parliamentary candidates than to settle on a single presidential candidate. But the authorities may have the upper hand. In Tbilisi, Kiev, and Bishkek, the leaders of the "color revolutions" had already held lofty positions in regimes that they now attacked as thoroughly corrupt; yet they succeeded in gaining the population's trust. That is far from a foregone conclusion in Azerbaijan, where the last stint in power by some of the opposition leaders in 1992-1993 still evokes bitter memories of a time of war and crisis that few can recall without horror.
Most importantly however, the previous "color revolutions" underscore the crucial role of world public opinion and the global mass media that shape it. As in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the fate of the regime and the country may well hang on whether the current government is portrayed on the world's television screens as a violator of human rights that is thwarting the will of the people and thus rejecting "generally accepted democratic values."
Such an image may be less valid in Azerbaijan. After coming to power in 1993, Heydar Aliyev stopped the war with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, secured Azerbaijan's existence as a sovereign state, and, as the oil-and-gas sector flourished, oversaw the country's growing international authority. The transfer of power from father to son took place peacefully, and Ilham's administration has presided over completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline -- to the annoyance of Russia and Armenia.
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