Has Ilham Aliyev fulfilled his promises in the last election?

According to the international group Tasnim News Agency, early presidential elections of Azerbaijan on 7 February next year will be held in this country. Although there are less than two months left for the election, there is no election space in the Republic of Azerbaijan. The main reasons for this are the lack of a democratic atmosphere in this country, restrictions on the activities of the media and civil society, as well as political organizations.

Ilham Aliyev’s 8-page program

In democratic countries, the election process also becomes a competition of ideas. Political parties announce their election programs and tell citizens about the projects they will implement if they are elected. Elham Aliyev, the president of this country, officially announced the election program before the last election in 2018, which he won without competition. Azerbaijan government’s approach to elections is superficial. In this way, the size of the electoral program announced by Ilham Aliyev before the 2018 presidential election was only 8 pages. Hakim of Turkey was published, it consisted of 481 pages. Ilham Aliyev’s latest election program is far from the standards in terms of volume and writing, because in this type of documents, candidates express their promises in a more measurable way.

However, General words related to promises are used in Ilham Aliyev’s election programs. For example, in the election program in Turkey, many promises, such as how many houses will be built, how many people will be given points, and how many tourists will come to the country after the measures taken, were reflected in concrete figures.

Such an approach allows citizens to evaluate the government’s performance in the next election, because the government’s promises are expressed in concrete numbers and it is easy to measure whether these promises have been fulfilled or not.

Let’s take a look at Ilham Aliyev’s election program. At the end of all promises there are words like “sustainable growth will be realized”, “significantly increased”, “complex measures will be implemented”.

Since the government of Azerbaijan promises does not reveal itself in a tangible and measurable way, the representatives of power get the opportunity to manipulate and change the course. has it. Because if the representatives of the government really expected a serious increase, they would not have abused such generalizations and would not have insured themselves. It is their ego and also their indifferent approach towards the election process, because for many years the fate of elections in the Republic of Azerbaijan has been decided by the will of the government, not the citizens.

The only measurable promise

In the election program announced by Ilham Aliyev before the 2018 presidential election, it is related to a total of 18 goals It is mentioned with economic and social orientations. Only one of those 18 goals was reflected in a specific figure: the government said it would target an annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of more than 3 percent if elected.

The growth or decrease of the gross domestic product of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2023-2018 is as follows:

2018: 1.4 percent increase

year 2019: 2.2% increase

2020: 4.3% decrease

2021: 5.6% increase

Year 2022: 4.6% increase

Year 2023: 0.8% increase

As these statistics show, although the government of Azerbaijan previously Since the last presidential election, he promised GDP growth of more than 3% per year, GDP growth exceeded 3% in only two years from 2018 – 2021 and 2022.

In 2020, the GDP of the country’s economy decreased due to the Corona epidemic. However, before the outbreak of the pandemic in 2018-2019, Azerbaijan’s GDP growth was not at the level desired by the government. Azerbaijan’s GDP growth in the first 11 months of this year was less than one percent.

What about the goals of economic diversification? ?

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Many goals have been defined, including the development of the non-oil sector, increasing the export capacity of non-oil fields, and expanding the export geography. Export is one of the best indicators of the share of the non-oil sector in the country’s economy.

Looking at Azerbaijan’s export indicators, it is clear that compared to the last election period (2017), the share of the non-oil sector in Not only has the export not increased, but on the contrary, it has decreased.

In 2017, the share of the oil and gas industry in Azerbaijan’s exports was 88.6 percent. Currently, this figure is 90.7 percent. Therefore, the government of Azerbaijan has not fulfilled its promise to diversify exports and reduce the share of the energy sector.

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