Azerbaijan and props of western democracy
Analysis by Sergei Bogdan

ANALYTICS  06 August 2023 - 10:38

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe recently expressed her concern over the "humanitarian and human rights situation in Nagorno-Karabakh." The PACE president also joined her. The successes of the Azerbaijani state in the gradual elimination of the consequences of aggression and the restoration of the rights of the people of Azerbaijan throughout the country with minimum use of force have caused concern among Western "democratic" structures.

The expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis and the long-term occupation of Karabakh by Armenian nationalists did not cause such violent indignation in the West. However, it is not only about it. Western liberal-democratic politicians boast of their democracy and lecture others about rights, although in their own countries, the notions of sovereignty and the rights of the people to be masters of their own land are rapidly turning into fiction.

Money, not votes

The West has so successfully arrogated to itself the right to assess the degree of democracy and respect for human rights in a particular country that they have become an empty phrase, a buzzword, and a synonym for compliance with US and EU requirements. It is time to get into healthy fundamentalism and remember that democracy in its most basic translation means "rule by the people". Simply put, these are the rights and opportunities really available to citizens: 1) to independently decide how to live; 2) to achieve the implementation of the adopted decisions. Without these rights, any other human rights remain a sham. Is this not a problem in the liberal democracies of the West and Western-approved political regimes around the world?

As the main indicator, the West often uses only primitive electoral politics - elections and the processes associated with them. And it is hard to imagine that ordinary citizens could seriously influence public policy in a number of liberal democratic countries. And it's not even that on some major political issues, especially foreign policy, and security, it is no longer customary to ask citizens in the West and in pro-western regimes. Even when they recently renounced their long-standing neutrality and joined the NATO bloc, the political elites of Sweden and Finland flatly refused to ask citizens - they say, "newspaper polls" are enough.

But the matter is not limited to individual topics on which the opinion of citizens in the West is defiantly ignored. The foundations of citizens' rights to participate in politics have been undermined in general. Let's take the simplest aspect - the role of money. In the same American politics, it is obvious, the degree of preparedness of a politician or party for an election campaign is measured precisely by the amount of money collected. A couple of weeks ago, the American media was hotly discussing how successful President Biden was in collecting donations for re-election. Biden launched the campaign in April and by July had raised $72 million.

This is a lot of money since this amount was collected at the very early stage of the campaign - the elections themselves will take place in the autumn of 2024. In the previous 2020 presidential campaign, Biden was elected with a billion dollars. Biden's current re-election campaign is expected to surpass that mark, setting a new record for the cost of running for the presidency. Yes, by the way, in addition to this money, funds that are difficult to assess are also pumped into the election campaigns, spent by the so-called "political action committees" in favor of one candidate or another.

Election to the American parliament costs less, but it is also quite an expensive undertaking, and the same can be said about the relevant bodies at lower levels. Is it necessary to say that as a result, politicians begin to care, first of all, not about citizens, but about establishing relations with sponsors? And before the elections, after the elections, and instead of the elections. And the endless leapfrog with re-election makes politics just a kind of business in which social activity, the interests of the people as such, and their opinion recede further and further into the background in Western politics.

Knowledge is harmful!

And no matter how much they talk about "social lifts" and equality of rights, the so-called "elites" still rule in the West. Selection of their composition is not connected with a better understanding and skills of leading the masses. Often they are generally as far as possible from departments they are assigned to lead. In conditions when they simultaneously need to fight for re-election (and electoral cycles are short, and even the US president has to start a campaign for re-election almost halfway through his term), the lack of elementary specialized education, not to mention experience, turns everything into outright absurdity, sometimes very dangerous.

Take, for example, the Western-promoted appointment of defense ministers of people who are as remote as possible from security issues. This demagogy has never had anything to do with the empowerment of women or the social control of the army, but the consequences for Western democracies are manifesting themselves at all levels. For example, the six-year tenure of the gynecologist Ursula von der Leyen as head of the German Defense Ministry, described in enthusiastic tones by liberal propagandists as a brilliant example of the first woman to serve as Minister of Defense of the FRG, still affects the state of the German army to this day.

It was replaced by equally “trained” personnel, and the Bundeswehr is still little capable of fulfilling its tasks. The situation is no better in other ministries. The current German Economy Minister Robert Habek, for example, is generally a literary scholar, and therefore it is even somehow inconvenient to criticize him for the enchanting failure of the course he announced to diversify energy resources and avoid Russian supplies, in particular through a deal with Qatar.

In such a system, “democratic politicians”, after serving their posts, as a rule, are not responsible for the results of their leadership. Fortunately, tenure in such positions usually allows them to blame the consequences on their predecessors. In any case, they remain in politics and go for promotion, even after corruption scandals.

However, there is another aspect - in the absence of even a basic understanding of the areas of activity that such politicians have to "lead", they become puppets in the hands of experts. Therefore, one should not be surprised at the strange statements of some Western statesmen about the South Caucasus or Azerbaijan - perhaps the poor fellow really does not understand what he is talking about.

All this scheme in the spirit of “ignorance and leapfrog guarantee objectivity” is admired by supporters of the liberal democracy of the West - they say, the turnover of politicians, no one stays long, and the lack of knowledge of the leadership is generally a miracle, how it helps to lead since it forces a person to objectively rely on more knowledgeable subordinates! But, in essence, this is just a sham that hides the real control of the state by the establishment, shuffling people in elected positions, but controlling the processes behind their backs. The establishment amazingly does not change, often differs in hereditary character, and invariably pursues its own interests, which it passes off as public ones through its own media. It is difficult to talk about the rights of citizens, the population of Western countries in this case.

Provocation and ban

Not surprisingly, in such a situation, fewer voters turn out to vote in Western countries and governments have long been effectively elected by a minority. Take, for example, French President Macron. It seems that he was re-elected last year by a majority of votes - as much as 58 per cent, but at the same time, almost every third voter ignored the poll. This is the highest rate of refusal to vote in elections since 1969. France is not some kind of anomaly - all over the West, people see no point in voting if only politicians with no more than senseless ideological overtones can be chosen. This is mostly passive protest, allowing the Western liberal establishment to hold on to power without bothering to work with voters.

But from time to time, powerful protest movements arise, and therefore, the special services are on the alert, actively recruiting secret agents and sending their agents to new alternative (and therefore suspected of radicalism) movements. For example, in Germany, the key domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitutional System, lives, as pro-government commentators complain, “from scandal to scandal”. About five years ago, it turned out that this structure paid money to the organization through secret agents, which eventually killed nine migrants and one police officer. But maybe it's only with extremists that they play like that? But no, even earlier the government failed to ban the National Democratic Party for "extremism", because it turned out that the security people stuffed its leadership with their secret police. In other words, have the people in uniform not driven the opposition party to extremism?

By the way, at the moment, they in Berlin are thinking about how to ban the far-right and scandalous Alternative for Germany (AfD). It is already the second most popular party in the country and is on the verge of becoming the first. It is being openly monitored, while the rest of the parties support the boycott of the AfD, which they loudly called the “democratic firewall”.

The AfD is indeed an unsympathetic party, perhaps, and fears about its ability to conduct a responsible policy are also justified. But the fight against it is conducted primarily through the rejection of any dialogue, using police methods. And why, when such problems in the form of extremist movements seeking to overthrow the constitutional order, arise in non-Western countries, do Western politicians deny these countries the right to protect their state institutions?

Official government without power

However, the liberal establishment of the West successfully limits political competition with the help of more subtle manipulations. As a result, an absurd situation arises when, even after voting and electing their representatives, people cannot achieve political changes. It turns out that the state has no power, as it is limited by the ideological framework, set by the local and international liberal establishment.

An example is the recent events in Israel. There, the country's government tried to limit the omnipotence of the judiciary, which had unprecedented powers. Last week, the Knesset passed an amendment to one of Israel's fundamental laws that replaces the constitution and limited the power of the country's Supreme Court to apply the principle of extreme unacceptability (or reasonableness). Due to the vagueness of the wording, this principle allowed the court to arbitrarily interfere in the policy of the country's leadership, in fact paralyzing the executive branch. From now on, the court will not be able to cancel the decisions of the government and parliament regarding the execution of political decisions.

For months, the entire liberal-democratic community in the West was indignant at the reforms planned in Israel. Like, the foundations of liberal democracy are being destroyed, as the power of the judiciary is being undermined. Opponents of the government did not stop street actions.

Such a reaction to attempts to narrow the powers of the judicial branch of government in Israel is not surprising - after all, the institution of a closed and all-powerful judiciary allows the liberal establishment to maintain the status quo throughout the West. In contrast to the parliament and the government, the judiciary is an institution that recruits only proven professionals who have undergone many years of legal (and, in fact, liberal ideological) training.

The principles of constant alternation within the judiciary - unlike other branches of government - either do not work at all or are significantly weakened. The election of judges to the constitutional and supreme courts is also mediated by such mechanisms and limited by such obstacles that a "sieve" appears through which the liberal establishment allows only "its own" to enter the judiciary.

All this allows the judiciary in Western countries to stop any initiative that is objectionable to the liberal establishment. Hence such a global reaction to the attempts of the Israeli leadership to reconsider the absurd situation, in which the parliament and government elected by the Israeli people are de facto subordinate to the ideological judiciary, which has a controversial democratic mandate. This is how opponents of the current Israeli reforms speak about it without hesitation: "The government is becoming more and more uncontrollable... now there is no basis on which the Supreme Court can intervene."

Why should then the government of a sovereign country be "controlled"? What is democracy, if not the ability of the citizens of a certain state to build their own lives according to their own laws? And it is significant that in response to the preparation and adoption by the elected parliament in accordance with the established procedure of amendments to the legislation, the opponents did not bother to comply with the rules.

Their representatives boycotted the Knesset meeting, other non-governmental organizations loudly issued their ultimatums to the legitimate authorities, and anonymous people in social networks threatened the government with mass emigration of medical workers and the refusal of the military to fulfill their duties! In fact, the entire global liberal-democratic community suggests that the legitimate parliament and government of Israel should retreat before a group of clearly less representative (and often associated with foreign) structures?

"Lachin corridor" and democratic rights of the Azerbaijani people

In another version of the same infringement of the people's rights to exercise their sovereignty, we see how the legitimate governments of sovereign countries are under pressure from foreign states and international structures. The latter demand that sovereign peoples abandon this or that policy, referring to certain liberal norms established by the West. For example, on Tuesday, the head of the US Agency for International Development, Samantha Power, called on Azerbaijan to open the so-called "Lachin corridor".

However, why should the legitimate Azerbaijani government, as the representative of the Azerbaijani people, renounce the sovereign rights of this people on their own land and allow the separatists to resume their subversive activities? After all, it is about this, and not about the blockade - Baku did not refuse to ensure the rights of all its citizens in Karabakh, regardless of their ethnicity. But the creation of special pseudo-legal regimes, according to calls and demands from anyone other than the Azerbaijani people, such as the so-called "Lachin corridor" is just grossly violating the rights of the Azerbaijani people. And those who demand this under the guise of human rights or democracy simply turn all the rights and principles of democracy into a caricature, cynically using them to carry out their policies.

The development and strengthening of sovereign Azerbaijan means respect for its people and state as a mechanism for realizing the interests and the will of the people. At the same time, any other considerations should recede into the background, such as the opinion of the West (the Russian Federation and any outside forces), which persistently promotes its vision of "democracy", "human rights" and "liberalism". At the same time, if we start not from Western liberal hairsplitting and formal indicators, but look at the essence of democracy as the ability of the people to determine how they should live on their land, then Western liberal democracy now looks like a dubious example.

Democracy is the real ability of citizens to participate in the construction of their future, and not a picture count of votes under the supervision of NGOs with murky funding and not a formal leapfrog in power. Democracy is when the Azerbaijani people drive the invaders out of their land, and then say "No" to foreign politicians who interfere in the affairs of their state.

Caliber.Az