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<<previous | index | next>> Local Government InterferenceUnder the election code it is forbidden for state employees to interfere in the election campaign process.38 Although President Ilham Aliev’s May 11 decree restated this principle, his government has failed to back it up with enforcement. Human Rights Watch has received credible information from local monitors, opposition party members, independent candidates and their supporters in several regions of the country that local government authorities, which answer directly to the presidential administration, have been campaigning for YAP candidates, putting pressure on state employees to support YAP candidates and not to attend opposition rallies or meetings, and using government resources to campaign for YAP candidates.39 And, as noted above, the election commissions that are supposed to investigate complaints of such violations rarely rule against the local authorities.
[38] Article 115 of the Election Code, articles 39-48 Administrative Code, and articles 159-61 of the Criminal Code. [39] In September and October 2005, Human Rights Watch interviewed people in Baku, Gazakh, Tovuz, Ganja, Jalalabad, Lenkoran, and Nakhchivan, as well as in some villages surrounding these locations. These findings are supported by the findings of the OSCE in its second interim report (OSCE/ODIHR, Election Observation Mission, Republic of Azerbaijan – Parliamentary Elections 2005, Interim Report No. 2 (24 September–7 October), as well as by monitoring carried out by the Election Monitoring Center of Nongovernmental Organizations. Government authorities particularly pressure school teachers to attend YAP candidate meetings. For example, Human Rights Watch documented a case in which teachers of one school were forced to interrupt their lessons to attend a YAP candidate’s meeting with voters, while the school children played in the yard. Human Rights Watch interview with a teacher from the school, village in Azerbaijan, October 2005.
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