Azerbaijan: How not to fix an election

Another rigged vote in the former Soviet Union, but no revolution this time - yet

WHY was the polling station, at school 278 on the edge of Baku, locked and surrounded by police? The Azeri officer guarding the entrance couldn't say. Where were the ballot boxes, and why had independent observers been thrown out? In the melee inside, nobody knew.

Past midnight at school 104, another polling station in the same constituency, piles of ballots marked for Ali Kerimli, a leader of the Azadlig (Freedom) opposition block, lay dumped on the floor. A fight broke out. "It isn't possible," the head of the constituency election commission said of the discarded ballots. He agreed to drive your correspondent back to the school to prove it - but it was locked.

For the parliamentary election of November 6th in Azerbaijan, a petrostate of 8m people in the Caucasus, the authorities came up with a new election-cooking recipe. First, Ilham Aliev, who inherited the presidency from his father, Heidar, in a rigged poll in 2003, called for an honest vote. The opposition got television airtime (though news coverage was slanted). More than 2,000 candidates registered for the 125 constituencies (but a quarter later withdrew, sometimes because of intimidation, as rallies were broken up and activists arrested). On October 25th, Mr Aliev decreed that voters' fingers should be marked with ink, to prevent multiple voting. The American embassy was said to have spent more than $300,000 to ship in indelible ink, only for the Azerbaijanis to choose the invisible kind.

Although Azadlig claimed to have counted some 21,000 violations, the voting itself was smooth, if disorganised. "Chaos at work," said one western monitor, as voters struggled to find their names on the official lists. But, said an indigenous observer, "the interesting part will start after dinner." He was right. "When the fraud is so open," says Mr Kerimli, "it doesn't matter whose fingers are inked."

The subsequent choreography was familiar from other elections in the former Soviet Union. Mr Aliev's New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) declared victory with 63 seats, slightly fewer than last time; Azadlig officially won just six; "independents" took most of the rest. A heavyweight team of observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) declared that the poll failed international standards: 43% of the counts it observed had been "bad" or "very bad".

The European Union and America both chimed in - despite the oil and gas that will soon flow through a new pipeline from the Caspian to the Mediterranean (see map), which had seemed to soften previous western criticism of the Alievs. Sniffing an opportunity to endear itself to its former vassal, Russia criticised the OSCE. On November 9th came the first of what the opposition hopes will be many street protests. Surrounded by riot police, the leaders demanded fresh elections, and asked George Bush to stand up for democracy. As the crowd, thinking of Kiev last winter (and waving orange flags), chanted "Bring tents to the square!", another demo was called for November 12th.

Will a rigged post-Soviet election, plus corruption, produce another revolution? Probably not in Azerbaijan, for two main reasons. The first is the state of the opposition. It deserved more seats than it got, but it is nothing like as popular as its counterparts in Georgia, in 2003, or Ukraine last year. Whereas Mikhail Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko, now those countries' respective presidents, raised their profiles by serving in the administrations that they later ousted, Azadlig's leaders are tainted by association with the brief pre-Heidar government, blamed by many for setbacks that led to a loss of some 20% of Azerbaijan's territory to the Armenians. "We don't want to go back to the 1990s," says one YAP voter in Baku. This weakness will affect international calculations about how much pressure to put on Mr Aliev.

The second reason is the president's successful projection of a self-image as a good mini-tsar encumbered with bad advisers. His appeal is reinforced by fear - of losing jobs, as well as of harassment and violence. Asked, on polling day, what he thinks of the president, a man scrambling to get his name added to the electoral rolls at a Baku courthouse answers, "it's better not to say - I am afraid."

Mr Aliev's role in the election debacle is unknown. Perhaps he never meant what he said about honest elections. "He always talks like this," says Mr Kerimli, "but he is the head of falsifications." Or he may have been thwarted by a combination of chaos and retrograde forces within his administration, who are less interested in courting the West than in stopping parliamentary snooping into state-owned enterprises and corrupt monopolies. Something is clearly up inside the government. When an exiled opposition leader aborted a bid to return to Baku last month, assorted ministers and officials were fired, and several were arrested for plotting a coup - although personal rivalry is a likelier explanation for the episode than principle.

By November 9th, advocates of "good Ilham" could point to the fact that votes had been annulled or were being recounted in several constituencies (including Mr Kerimli's). Some regional bosses and officials were sacked. Yet Mr Aliev also praised the election; his concessions may be aimed merely at regaining credibility lost by cack-handed cheating.

Assuming that he is not toppled, the country's future will depend on how enlightened Mr Aliev now becomes. Drive out from oil-rich Baku to the nearby town of Nardaran, past old onshore oil derricks that still pump rustily away, and you find another country. "This oil is no use to us," says one local, who like most others is unemployed. In 2002, there were violent confrontations over failing water and power supplies in Nardaran, which is home to a Shia shrine and has Koranic verses painted on the walls. The chador-clad women entering the polling station, beneath a big poster of Heidar and Ilham, all seemed to be voting for a local religious candidate, Hajiaha Nuri. "Natural resources are a gift from God," says Mr Nuri (who lost), "and everyone should get their share."

Geography and a Muslim population do not make an Islamist upsurge inevitable in Azerbaijan, any more than its rigged election is sure to lead to revolution. Azeris, some say, are too practical for extremism. Perhaps. But if the oil money that is soon to flood in is not used wisely, something will have to give one day.