Elections in Azerbaijan - open letter People in Need

October 15, 2013

Dear Mr Panek,

Yesterday I received a soft copy of your undated open letter relating to the presidential elections in Azerbaijan.

I thank you hereby for your interest in my work and for providing your opinions.

Since year 2009, I act as a chairman of the permanent delegation at the European Parliament which cooperates with parliaments in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. At the same time I am a member of the Parliamentary Assembly EURONEST whose members are also parliamentarians of the above mentioned countries, including Ukraine and Moldova. The assembly only misses representatives of the Parliament in Belarus.

Euronest partnership is not a sole activity between Azerbaijan and the European Union. Azerbaijan concluded several agreements with the EU and further ones are being prepared. The aim of these agreements is to improve and enhance cooperation, as well as to promote democratic reforms, including further development of democracy and gaining more respect for human rights in Azerbaijan.

I can only agree with you that some of the recent observation missions on the presidential elections in Azerbaijan came to a different conclusion. For several years I have been taking part in observation missions repeatedly as a representative of the European Parliament and I have already experienced similar situation several times. Furthermore, I led several EP observation missions myself.

Fundamentally, I have to reject that neither myself nor my colleagues, Members of the European Parliament, would let themselves to "become a propaganda tool". Such statement is naive, unwise and shows that the author of such statement does not possess a basic knowledge of the work on observation missions.

I did not notice that some of the media would misinterpret my statements in relation to the presidential elections in Azerbaijan. In order to prevent this situation, I published my assessment, as well as the official statement of a joint report on the observation mission of the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on my website cabrnoch.cz.

Our observation mission commented on real records that we observed during the mission. On the other hand, we did not have the opportunity to observe personally the pre-election campaign unlike the workers on long-term observation mission. Therefore we do not assess it in our report. Furthermore we did not evaluate neither laws in Azerbaijan nor their compliance or non-compliance with European standards.

Given that in the past I had the opportunity to observe elections personally not only in Azerbaijan, I have the possibility to compare. Therefore I evaluate these presidential election, the election day itself and its eve, as a significant improvement. During the observation we have not encountered intimidation of voters or limiting their freedom of choice. The electoral process was transparent, none of the dozens of local observers, including many representatives of opposition political parties or candidates, had complained about any violation of the freedom of elections.

I am aware that the situation in Azerbaijan is far from perfect. We have expressed this opinion repeatedly, not only during our meetings of the Permanent Delegation under my leadership, but also in other documents of the European Parliament. We strive to improve this situation. We continuously support Azerbaijan in its way to democracy. But it also has to be understood that our support cannot be based solely on criticism and condemn.

Regarding your questions:

1 ) I cannot judge why the OSCE report (previously Parliamentary Assembly OSCE and ODIHR ) could potentially be wrong. I can only declare that the European Parliament delegation and a delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted its joint report. In this report we summarise our own observations which in some cases differ from the observation and evaluation of our fellow colleagues from the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE and ODIHR.

2 ) During our observation mission I did not provide any public statement regarding these elections. It would be in conflict with the rules of the observation mission which presents the results of its observations at a press conference on the following day after the elections.

3 ) Our observation mission was organised, financed and logistically secured solely by the European Parliament.

4 ) During the observation, neither before nor afterwards, I did not receive any honorarium or present.

In conclusion, I would like to inform you that all seven Members of the European Parliament participating in the observation mission, have the same opinion on the evaluation of the presidential elections. In the observation mission were involved MEPs elected in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, Poland and Romania. All in all, these people are respected politicians who are familiar with the Caucasus problematics and who are experienced in observing elections.

I am pleased that you expressed your interest in my work at the European Parliament, particularly in a delegation that I lead myself and also in the observation mission during the presidential elections in Azerbaijan. If you were interested, I would be very happy to meet you personally and we can take the opportunity to discuss this topic. I would be pleased to share my experience and opinions with you.

I wish you a lot of successes for future work in People in Need.

Best regards

Milan Cabrnoch