(Bloomberg) -- Azerbaijan's ruling party urged President Ilham Aliyev to dissolve parliament and pave the way for the first snap elections of lawmakers in the Caspian Sea nation.
The move would allow political changes begun by Aliyev in recent months to extend to “renewing parliament,” Ali Ahmadov, executive secretary of the New Azerbaijan Party, told reporters Thursday in the capital, Baku. He didn't specify what changes may take place or when parliament may be dissolved.
The party, known as YAP, controls the 125-seat legislature together with pro-government lawmakers listed as “independents” in the authoritarian nation of 10 million. The next parliamentary elections had been scheduled for November 2020.
Aliyev, 57, has purged the government and the presidential staff of several elderly top officials in recent weeks, including his 81-year-old chief of staff, Ramiz Mehdiyev, as he urged an acceleration in the pace of reforming the economy. Energy-rich Azerbaijan is still recovering after devaluing its currency twice in 2015 following the worst crash in oil prices in a generation.
The president succeeded his father, Heydar, in 2003. He won a landslide to secure a fourth term and extend his rule for seven years in 2018 presidential elections criticized as flawed by Western observers and boycotted by opposition parties. That followed constitutional changes approved in a 2016 referendum to increase the president's authority. Aliyev then tightened his family's grip on power by naming his wife, Mehriban Aliyeva, as Azerbaijan's first vice president.
Dissolving the parliament “is not about any reforms at all,” Ali Karimli, chairman of the opposition Popular Front of Azerbaijan Party, said in a video statement on Facebook. The move seeks to “concentrate all power and resources in the hands of the Pashayevs” by extending their influence in the legislature, he said, referring to Aliyeva's family.
To contact the reporter on this story: Zulfugar Agayev in Baku at zagayev@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Torrey Clark at tclark8@bloomberg.net, Tony Halpin, Gregory L. White
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