Chief executive of Israeli Azerbaijanis Congress: "Ilham Aliyev is a charismatic leader of new formation, who knows how to tackle the present day challenges"

The recent presidential elections in Azerbaijan have successfully passed even the international exam for transparency, fairness and democracy, and demonstrated flexibility of Azerbaijani statehood.

They proved existence of the lively, effective connection between the President and the Azerbaijani community. Ilham Aliyev, whose victory is perceived as undoubted, becomes a real political man of wisdom in the South Caucasus with a broad experience of presidency. He has been governing Azerbaijan successfully for the past five years. He continues the course of national leader Heydar Aliyev successfully in all strategic directions, including strengthening of country's sovereignty, fight for territorial integrity and further democratization of the political system and development of the international and interreligious tolerance. Today it is possible to speak about President Aliyev as of a stable charismatic political figure, carrying our a huge work in the complex and unpredictable region and playing an important role in the preservation of a sort of a balance of powers and influence.

One of the main advantages of Ilham Aliyev's presidency is the economic achievements of the country. "Process of construction is ongoing throughout the country, the society is growing spiritually and these are the realities of Azerbaijan", states Aliyev. The fact is that that through the past three years the country's economy grew 96%, poverty reduced from 49 to 16%, Azerbaijan became a world leader for its growth rates, monetary reserves topped $10 bln, over 600,000 new jobs were created, about 200 new schools were constructed and social problems are settled.

Through the first term of his presidency Ilham Aliyev chose a strategy of active steps and faced the future challenges with brevity, winning over the rivals and time. People in Azerbaijan realized that this is not merely "Heydar Aliyev's son", but he is also a new independent and charismatic leader who is able to tackle the present day challenges and has his own vision of the complex geopolitical situation in the region. Getting a change for an innovative rush, owing to the successful conjuncture of world oil prices and passing the way of creating independent routes of their supply, Ilham Aliyev managed not only to collect and consolidate the oil revenues, flowing to Azerbaijan, in the state budget but also to invest them into the large scale development of the country and demonstrated stably high growth rates even in conditions of external instability.

I would like to note after staying in Israel for over 8 years that the political, military and public figures of Israel have traditionally good opinion about Azerbaijan, prospects of Azerbaijani-Israeli cooperation and about President Ilham Aliyev. Thus, Minister of National Infrastructure of Israel Binyamin Ben Eliezer, who has repeatedly visited Azerbaijan through the past years, considers the President of Azerbaijan to be an energetic, pragmatic and wise politician of the new generation. "From the political point of view, he realizes the situation of Azerbaijan well", said the Israeli Minister. According to him, under I.Aliyev's leadership, Azerbaijan has attained a large progress and made a significant economic rush since gaining independence.

"I was sure that President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev will again win people's trust during the democratic presidential elections", said general Efraim Sne, deputy of the Israeli parliament, former chairman from Israel in the Azerbaijani-Israeli interparliamentary group of friendship, former deputy Minister of Defense of Israel, head of the "Powerful Israel" party.

"Ilham Aliyev's presidency showed that he is an effective politician who managed to ensure the political stability in the country and attain high level of support of the population", said the Istaeli parliamentarian. According to Sne, Ilham Aliyev follows his father's way both in the external and internal policy and wisdom, brevity and real vision of the challenges of world policy and economy are obvious here.

Ilham Aliyev preserved the balance in the world arena, he chose the multi-directional policy, strategy of flexible alliances. It is still ensuring the giant potential for a long term development and gives more reliable guarantees to the implementation of independent external policy. The multi-directional external policy of Azerbaijan is an opportunity to have a flexible course, without joining any geopolitical groupings and at the same time value the relations with friendly neighbors and remote friends. Under I.Aliyev's leadership Azerbaijan has become a real geopolitical player with his own, more powerful geopolitical and geoeconomic interests.

Today Azerbaijan has really turned into a regional leader, into a leading country in the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasus. The leadership is obvious not only in the sphere of international cooperation but also in the implementation of large regional projects. It has been attained thanks to ensuring factors of stability and security, The political course, intergovernmental relations and relations with international structures are intended not only for today but also for the long-term perspective. Ilham Aliyev continues his historical mission. This mission pursues the goal of strengthening and expansion of the attained achievements. Within his first term of presidency Ilham Aliyev managed to lay a specific external political course, distancing from the west and too intensive friendship of the Kremlin. In conditions when Washington intensified when the events of the second wave of democratization (orange revolutions) were developing in the post-Soviet area, Aliyev managed to offer Russia to develop mutually profitable relations by the new pragmatic conditions, at the same time defending the course of economic sovereignty. Ilham Aliyev managed to preserve the external political line of his father, adding his own ideas to it.

A unique integration of experience and progressive renovation, traditions and youth is forming in Azerbaijan today and most people are inclined towards this progressive breakthrough. People expect quite a new dynamics, a new style of state management. A new generation emerges on the arena of the political and business life of Azerbaijan. Ilham Aliyev is a president of the new formation. He has fully assimilated western technologies, he believes in progress and efforts. Thus, today Azerbaijan is in a big, complex and rapidly changing world. History often proves that a country, whose leader relies on people, will flourish. The elections confirmed that Ilham Aliyev gained the respect and love among his compatriots both in Azerbaijan and in the diaspora. The whole geopolitical composition of powers in the world arena has changed through the past two decades. President Ilham Aliyev, leading Azerbaijan, has become an active participant of this process of formation of a new world system. The path of the countries is often compared to the fast movement of a ship towards new horizons or a plane, flying high. Yet, there are no stops in people's lives. There are new challenges on the way of independent Azerbaijan and the newly elected president of Azerbaijan knows well how to tackle them.

Arrier Gut,
Chief executive of the Congress of Azerbaijanis of Israel