ياشاسين آذربايجان - Long live Azerbaijan

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Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliev also wants to extend his term of presidency! But he does not want 1 or 2 more years; he is seeking a life-long presidency! It is said that he could win this time when making changes to constitution, which is illegal, because oppositions are being put out of their place in parliament and also in whole country!

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Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliev also wants to extend his term of presidency! But he does not want 1 or 2 more years; he is seeking a life-long presidency! It is said that he could win this time when making changes to constitution, which is illegal, because oppositions are being put out of their place in parliament and also in whole country!

According to The Globe and Mail, As if to counter the mood of democratic change in the United States, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev yesterday launched a constitutional amendment that would allow him and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to remain the legal leaders of Russia, with little chance for challenge, through the next two decades.

The change, introduced in the State Duma, raises the presidential term of office to six years from four, beginning with the next president. It would allow Mr. Putin, who stepped down from the presidency this year after he reached the constitutional two-consecutive-term limit, to run again in 2012 or 2016 for two more terms totalling 12 years. Officials close to Mr. Putin say he will likely do so.

That change, along with other proposals that would make it extremely difficult for political parties other than Mr. Putin’s United Russia to put up top-level candidates in elections, virtually guarantees the reign of Mr. Putin – widely considered to be the true leader behind Mr. Medvedev’s presidency – either as prime minister or president for a period that could last as long as 22 more years.

While Kremlin officials dismissed the measures as housekeeping, most Russian opposition figures, many of whom have been banned from running for office, described them as something akin to a coup d’état.

“This is anti-constitutional, anti-democratic reform … it means that these people who are now in power would like to concentrate and preserve power in their positions,” said Mikhail Kasyanov, who was prime minister of Russia until February of 2004, when Mr. Putin, then president, sacked him along with the rest of his cabinet.

“We don’t have separation of powers, we don’t have free media, we don’t have an independent judiciary and people have no right to participate in political life,” he said in a long, angry interview. “And now, finally, we have lost our last freedom to have political elections.”

These changes are occurring at a moment when Mr. Medvedev has engaged the United States in heated Cold War-style, nuclear-weapons sparring on the eastern borders of Europe, apparently intended to drive U.S. president-elect Barack Obama into new negotiations.

Mr. Medvedev’s government yesterday reiterated a threat he made the day after Mr. Obama’s election to station a battery of nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad, a Russian-controlled peninsula on the Baltic Sea that borders Poland and Lithuania, if the incoming president does not abandon U.S. plans to put an anti-missile radar system in the Czech Republic.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated yesterday that the threat to deploy the Iskander short-range missiles is a negotiating tactic aimed at changing the U.S. stand toward the region near the Russian border.

The missiles, he said, would be deployed only if the United States builds a proposed radar and anti-missile system based in the former Soviet satellite states of Poland and the Czech Republic and designed to counter future Iranian missiles. President George W. Bush has refused to allow Russia to participate in this project, even though Russian officials also see Iran as a threat. As a result, Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev have increasingly portrayed the United States – until recently an ally – as an armed threat approaching the Russian border.

The sabre-rattling is widely seen, both in Moscow and in Western diplomatic circles, as a tactical move intended to help negotiate a new settlement with the United States, one that would reopen trade and political relations on terms more friendly to Russia and its interests.

“In the dialogue with the West, the Kremlin is switching to the language of force,” Moscow analyst Mikhail Rostovskiy said. “It is clear that the Russian President’s statements should primarily be considered an offer directed at the new U.S. leader to enter into diplomatic bargaining.”

This is just the sort of agreement that is being attempted this week between the European Union and Russia. On Monday, the 27-nation European Union agreed to resume negotiations toward a new economic and political co-operation agreement with Russia, a pact that will break a period of isolation imposed over Russia’s military intervention in Georgia. The deal, which would open trade between Russia and Europe and bring political institutions closer together, is likely to be fleshed out at a major EU-Russia summit in Nice, France, on Friday.

Russia has had an easier time winning the co-operation of Europe, as many of the major western and central European countries are largely reliant on Russian gas and oil for heating and transportation.

While the EU-Russia pact is described by many European leaders as an effort to open up Russia to democratic reforms, many other officials share the view expressed by the newspaper La Voix du Luxembourg yesterday that this is a case of “European ideals sacrificed for heating.”

CORRECTION
Kaliningrad is on the Baltic Sea. Incorrect information appeared in some editions yesterday.

, Voice of a Nation

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