I. INTRODUCCION
1.4 RESULTADOS ESPERADOS
2.2.2 Alcantarillado sanitario
2.2.2.1 Sistema de alcantarillado sanitario por ciudades
(Azerbaycan Respublikasi)
By Robinder S. Bhatty
Revised by Roger Kangas, Ph.D.
T
he territory of Azerbaijan is 86,600 square kilome- ters, including the exclave of Naxcivan. At present, forces of Armenia and the self-proclaimed “Republic of Nagorno-Karabagh” government occupy approxi- mately 17 percent of Azeri territory. The population of Azerbaijan is one of the fastest growing of the former Soviet states. In mid-2005 there were an estimated 7,911,974 citizens—a figure that will most likely sur- pass 9 million by 2010.Azerbaijan is located in the South Caucasus region. It is bordered on the north by the Russian Federation; to the south by the Republic of Iran; to the east by the Caspian Sea; and to the west by the Republics of Armenia and Georgia. The territories that make up present-day Azerbaijan were incorporated into the Russian Empire during a period of piecemeal annexa- tion from Persia between 1804 and 1828. Azerbaijan enjoyed a brief period of independence from 1918 to 1920 following the collapse of the czarist regime in Russia, then was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920.
Azerbaijan regained its independence in December 1991 following the disintegration of the USSR.
The System of
Government
Azerbaijan is a secular republic composed of 59 admin- istrative regions, 11 cities, and one autonomous state.
Its November 12, 1995, constitution (amended August 24, 2002) calls for a president and unicameral national assembly that are directly elected by the people and a prime minister that is appointed by the president.
EXECUTIVE
Azerbaijan is a parliamentary republic headed by a directly elected president. The president has a wide range of powers. The president is commander in chief of the armed forces and appoints district governors and district and Supreme Court judges. He may remove judges and governors from their posts at his discretion. He may also supersede parliament entirely and rule by decree.
Under the 1995 constitution the president is elected for a five-year term. There is no limit on the number of terms the president may serve.
The first non-Communist president of indepen- dent Azerbaijan was Abulfaz Elchibei of the Popular Front, who took office in June 1992 after elections that were considered free and fair by international observers. President Elchibei was overthrown in a coup d’état and eventually replaced by Heydar Aliyev in June 1993. President Aliyev was directly elected on October 3, 1993, allegedly winning 98 percent of the vote. Two other candidates received less than 1 percent of the vote each. The Azerbaijan Popular Front boycotted the vote, which was declared undemocratic by interna- tional observers.
Aliyev won another election in 1998 and was the front-runner for the October 15, 2003, election.
However, in April of that year he collapsed at a public event and was hospitalized, remaining out of public view for much of this time. On August 4, 2003, he appointed his son, Ilhom, to be the prime minister. Ilhom had been previously appointed first vice presi- dent of the Azerbaijani State Oil Company and also first vice chairman of the New Azerbaijan Party; thus, speculation had surrounded his possible succession of his father. The elder Aliyev eventually withdrew from the race in favor of his son, who won handily in the October balloting, officially receiving 76.84 percent of the vote. Since that time Ilhom Aliyev has been able successfully to coalesce his authority. This is no small feat, given the sheer power the elder Heidar Aliyev wielded during his tenure as president (and before, as first secretary of the Azerbaijani Communist Party during the Soviet era). The death of the elder Aliyev shortly after the election further put the attention on the new president.
The powers of the prime minister, not surprisingly, are not as broad as those of the president. The prime minister is responsible for forming a government that dictates the day-to-day policies of the country, in cooperation with the legislature. In reality, the prime minister is responsive to the president and follows the wishes of his superior executive office holder. As of November 2003 the prime minister is Artur Rasizade and the first deputy prime minister is Abbas Abbasov. Both are influential advisers to President Aliyev and are seen as prominent political actors in the Azeri elite.
LEGISLATURE
The Azerbaijani parliament is the Milli Mejlis, which has a single chamber with 125 seats, 100 of them single-member ridings and 25 divided on the basis of proportional representation. As of November 2005 all 125 seats are contested in single-member districts.
According to the constitution, the Milli Mejlis is the supreme law-making body in Azerbaijan. It works in conjunction with the prime minister and his cabinet on executing the directives sent by the president. The powers of the Milli Mejlis have been reduced over time, and it is not seen as a real rival body to balance the authority of the president.
As of the last round of elections (November 2000), the Milli Mejlis is dominated by the New Azerbaijan Party (NAP), which holds 108 seats. The Azerbaijani Popular Front holds seven, the Musavat Party holds two, and individuals who have various party affilia- tions take the remaining eight seats.
JUDICIARY
The Azeri legal system has undergone some reform since the end of the Soviet era. In particular, the 1995 constitution set up a system of district courts around the country and a Supreme Court in Baku that also serves as a court of appeals. The Supreme Court also has exclusive jurisdiction over cases involving national security. Much of the legal code remains unchanged from the Soviet era, however. The Popular
Front government (1992–93) did revise some of the criminal statutes, introducing new classifications of crimes and setting out minimum and maximum sen- tences in each category.
Judges are appointed and removed by the presi- dent, and in general the judiciary is heavily politicized and favors the state. Trials are generally public, and defendants are entitled to court-appointed attorneys. However, defense lawyers in political cases have often been subject to harassment by police or thugs.
REGIONAL AND LOCAL
GOVERNMENT
Azerbaijan is divided into 59 raions, or provinces. Each province is administered by a governor, called the head of the executive power, appointed directly by the president, who may also remove them at his discretion. They serve until relieved. There are also 11 major cit- ies that have their own mayors, also appointed by the president. Some of these raions and cities are currently under Armenian occupation.
The Naxcivan Autonomous State (under the terms of the 1995 constitution, it is no longer referred to as an “autonomous republic”), a region under Azeri jurisdiction but physically separated from Azerbaijan by territory of the Republic of Armenia, has its own parliament, its own cabinet, and its own constitu- tion. It does not have a president or prime minister. The Naxcivan parliament has jurisdiction over social and economic matters and can impose taxes. It has no formal armed forces and no independent foreign policy; however, relations between the Naxcivan government and Iran are much warmer than are Iran’s relations with the Azeri central government in Baku. This is a reflection of Naxcivan’s geographic situation, sandwiched between Iran and Armenia; in particular, it is heavily dependent on Iran for food and energy supplies.
Provincial and municipal civil servants are employ- ees of the central government in Baku. Subnational gov- ernments have no authority to levy taxes and depend completely on disbursements from the national gov- ernment. Although there have been calls to reform the regional and local political structures, allowing them to raise more revenues independent of the national government, nothing has been done.
The regions do have their own councils that are now directly elected for five-year terms. However, the elections in 1999 and 2004 were heavily criticized for being fraudulent and under the control of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party.
The Electoral System
Azerbaijan’s national parliament, the Milli Mejlis, used to employ a mixed system of proportional rep- resentation and “winner-take-all” representation. Of the 125 seats in the parliament, 100 were single- candidate, winner-take-all ridings; 25 were reserved for proportional representation to be divided among competing parties on the basis of their percentage of the national vote.
The electoral system changed slightly for the November 2005 elections. In that, all 125 members of the Milli Mejlis are to be directly elected in single- member districts. Those elected will continue to serve five-year terms with the next scheduled elections to take place in November 2010.
Revisions in the registration laws for political parties in 2000 and 2002 require that individu- als running for president amass 40,000 signatures with representation in all districts of the country. This was a problem in the 2003 elections as opposi- tion candidates protested that the Central Electoral Commission often declared their signature sheets invalid. As for the election itself, a simple majority is required for the winning candidate. In 2003 Ilhom Aliyev won with 76.84 percent of the vote. His clos- est rival, Isa Gambar, garnered only 13.97 percent of the vote. There were over 1,000 international observ- ers, including 600 representing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The consensus view was that the election was not “free or fair” and “failed to meet OSCE standards.” More- over, the protests that took place after the election, which resulted in over 100 injured and one killed when police dispersed the demonstrators, only fur- ther stained the elections.
The Party System
Prior to independence in December 1991 the only legal party in Azerbaijan was the Azerbaijan Com- munist Party. The Popular Front, founded in the fall of 1989 as a coalition of liberal Baku intellectu- als, hard-line nationalists, and a broad assortment of other political factions, did not function as a political party until 1992. The Musavat Party, which governed the first Azerbaijan Republic between 1918 and 1920, was able to remain active in Turkey during the Soviet era and became active again in Azerbaijan in 1992, first as part of the Popular Front govern-
ment and subsequently as an independent party. All other Azerbaijani political parties were created dur- ing or after 1992.
Excepting the Communist Party, the ruling New Azerbaijan Party, the Popular Front, and the Musa- vat Party, Azeri political parties tend to have small memberships and are weakly institutionalized. In general, they serve as platforms for the ambitions of individual leaders. Moreover, as many of the opposition figures remain at odds with each other, there is little unity among the parties. This further weakens them and in turn benefits the ruling New Azerbaijan Party.
By Azeri law, political parties must obtain 50,000 signatures to be registered by the Ministry of Justice. Over time, this has meant that the total number of political parties has decreased—from over 100 in the early 1990s to fewer than 40 in the early 2000s. Indeed, of these, there are only a handful of parties that can legitimately be considered active organizations at the national level. The election commission barred the majority of these from participating in the 2003 elections, provoking a round of mergers between them. Some of these mergers dissolved after the elections; others remain.
Parties do campaign, but financial constraints limit all but a few to the cities of Baku and Ganje. Most voters are independent, if not apathetic. Party leaders tend to claim large memberships, but this appears to be based on the signature lists required for registration rather than on actual, card-carrying memberships.
Azerbaijani politics is dominated less by political parties than by clans, based on kinship, patronage, and personal ties. These in turn frequently have a strongly regional character. Beginning in the Brezhnev era, Azeri politics was strongly shaped by rivalries between clans based in the autonomous republic of Naxcivan, the home of then-chairman Heydar Aliyev, the city of Baku and the regions surrounding it, and the city of Agdam. The Nakhichevani clans became dominant in politics and the state, a position they have regained since Aliyev’s return to power.
Azerbaijan’s political elite, whether government or opposition, retains a strongly Nakhichevani flavor. Almost all political parties are headed by individuals born in the cities and villages of Nakhichevan. Since the creation of the New Azerbaijan Party, Nakhicheva- nis have become steadily more entrenched in the state bureaucracy in Baku. This development has caused a good deal of resentment among the non-Nakhichevani population of the country.