Reading the Runes in Baku
Ilham Aliyev has won reelection as president of Azerbaijan for a third term. The result was never in doubt. Nor was the fact that election observers would criticize the conduct of the poll—the OSCE monitoring team promptly released a statement describing a number of serious defects. Now it gets more interesting. As Aliyev begins his eleventh year as president of Azerbaijan, the huge shadow of his father and predecessor inevitably begins to recede and this is the moment for him to set a new political agenda for the country—if he wants too. As I have argued recently , a changing geopolitical environment means that he needs to do so or risk facing a whole new set of problems. Reading the runes in post-election Baku, there is already one important piece of news to ponder. This is that under a presidential pardon former Economic Development Minister Farhad Aliyev has been released from jail , along with his brother Rafik. Farhad Aliyev was jailed in 2005. Formally...