Azerbaijan

The governing Yeni Azerbaijan Party (YAP), which tops the list of registered candidates with 111 contenders, has tried to make its candidates’ educational credentials a big selling point with voters.

“There are five full and three correspondent members of the National Academy of Sciences, 10 university rectors, about 20 are professors or hold doctorate degrees in their fields” YAP Executive Secretary Ali Ahmedov said during an October 13 news conference, referring to the party’s slate of candidates.

Arguing that MPs do not have time both to run universities and serve in parliament, a group of Baku State University alumni is pressing ahead with a signature drive for the resignation of university rectors elected to parliament. The activists point out that such dual-office holding may be illegal, pointing to a provision in Azerbaijani election law that prohibits members of parliament from holding any paid or administrative post other than in the scientific, pedagogical or creative realms.

The campaign takes aim specifically at 10 university rectors, including 60-year-old Baku State University Rector Abel Maharramov, a YAP member who was elected to parliament in 2005. He has served as rector of Baku State University since 1999.

Maharramov is running against Erkin Gadirli, a 38-year-old former Baku State University law professor who helped coordinate the campaign for the release of jailed youth activists and bloggers external pageEmin Milli and Adnan Hajizadecall_made.

Gadirli, who alleges that restrictions on academic freedom prompted him to leave Baku State University, is running as an independent candidate with strong support from the opposition Musavat Party and Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan. A co-founder of the Alumni Network youth group with Milli, Gadirli now works as a legal consultant and private lecturer.

Participants in the signature drive to remove Rector Maharramov from office do not necessarily support Gadirli. Many describe themselves as non-partisan with no taste for politics. The signature drive’s initiator, Parviz Abbasov, says that the campaign’s goal is to ensure that university rectors will help establish the rule of law in Azerbaijan by their own example.

One signatory of the petition, Baku State University law student Anar Mamishov, asserted that flaws in Azerbaijan’s higher education system should require university rectors to direct their full attention to reforms. Among the problem areas is corruption. Baku State University was ranked as the fourth most corrupt university in Azerbaijan, according to a February 2010 report issued by the Student Cooperation International Public Union.

One education expert agrees with the ranking. Bribes are routinely paid to gain admission for students who failed the entrance exam, and “[t]here is no transparency in the university budget,” alleged Etibar Aliyev, head of the XXI Century Education Center Public Union. “You cannot even enter Baku State University without showing a student or teacher ID.”

Maharramov could not be reached to respond to the criticism.

The university’s problems, however, have not gone unnoticed in the higher echelons of government. In 2009, Ramiz Mehdiyev, head of the presidential administration, criticized the skill level of law students from Baku State University, charging in an Azerbaijani newspaper that the administration “can’t find a well-educated lawyer” to work for it. The university is the only higher education institution authorized to teach law in Azerbaijan.

The likelihood appears slim that Maharramov will abandon his reelection bid to focus on change at Baku State. For one, he appears to retain the full support of the governing party. Even before Azerbaijan’s official election campaign kicked off on October 15, the pro-government TV channel ATV aired a one-hour-long program about Maharramov that showed the university rector at home, playing volleyball, discussing his record at Baku State University and airing his campaign plans.

YAP spokesperson Huseyn Pashayev has asserted that the election law prohibition does not apply to Maharramov since university rectors are not considered to hold an administrative post. “There is no such law that bans rectors from being members of parliament,” Pashayev said. “Based on the petitioners’ logic, should teachers also not be in parliament?”

Elshad Hajizade, a deputy editor at the pro-government newspaper Ses who worked on Maharramov’s 2005 election campaign, described the rector’s job as “scientific-pedagogical.” Maharramov’s work at Baku State University “complements” his duties as an MP, he continued.

“It improves [his] output,” Hajizade said. “Parliament is also a platform. So he uses the platform to solve the problems he learns about thanks to his experience in the university. . . . Having a person involved in practical education policy in parliament can only contribute to the quality of lawmaking.”

But what the governing party sees as a non-issue prompts only criticism from election law experts.

Maharramov’s post, a presidential appointment, can only be described as administrative, said Hafiz Hasanov, head of the election watchdog Law and Democracy. “It is paid, it is full time employment and the law is absolutely clear about it -- one cannot be a member of parliament and hold such a position, neither in the government, nor in a private university,” he said. If Maharramov or another university rector wins election to parliament, Hasanov continued, “the Constitutional Court should . . . make it clear that they have to choose.”