Azerbaijani partisan leaders treat election boycott differently

Leaders of various political parties of Azerbaijan have different attitude to the possibility for the opposition to boycott the forthcoming presidential election.

Mubariz Gurbanly, deputy executive secretary of the party in power "Eni Azerbaijan", has noted when talking to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that the opposition speculates about the notion of "boycott", having deformed its sense in order to attract attention of the society. "Boycott means non-appearance of voters at the election, or their low activity. And if someone of the candidates from some party fails to take part in the election, is that boycott?" asked the spokesman of the party in power.

In the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan (DPA) the number of supporters of participation in the presidential election exceeds the number of boycott supporters. According to Talyat Aliev, deputy chairman of the DPA, the party leadership will make the final decision on participation in the election after having thoroughly evaluated the arguments of both parties. In case of negative decision, the DPA will not support any of the candidates for the president.

Araz Alizade, co-chairman of the Social-Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, has named the idea of boycott of the presidential election to be "complete nonsense". The politician is sure that all those who are going to boycott the election just know that they would lose it, therefore they refuse to participate.

We remind you that the Azerbaijani opposition, while disagreeing with the electoral legislation in force, has declared their refusal to participate in presidential election to be held in October 2008.