Election as President for more than twice. History of the issue

The initiative of the Yeni Azerbaijan party to lift a limit on election of one and the same person as a president for more than twice is being widely discussed on political arena of our country.

Naturally, there are both supporters (the majority) and the opponents of this proposal.

Frankly speaking, it has always been a puzzle for me why it is not impossible to elect one and the same person as a president for more than twice and thus follow the US model, as the only right one.

This raised a particular interest in me and I started to study the history of this issue, its origin in the United States.

Thus, this was just a political tradition to elect one and the same person as a president for more than twice since George Washington's times. But when democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the United States out of total depression and won the war, was elected for four times and the republicans were unable to present anyone, who could rival him, after getting the majority seats in the congress, they could do nothing better than to impose this restriction in 1947. It means that this restriction was imposed in the result of internal political fights, constant loss for the post of the president for 20 years. And then this amendment has turned into a sacred thing which could not be changed.

And now no one recalls the real cause of the adoption of this decision and that this decision was not caused by some democratic reasons, but by the willingness of a party not to allow its rivals to the power once again. The limit for election of a president for no more than twice has become the so-called basis of the democratic procedures, while in reality this is not true.

It is notable that all popular presidents of the United States including Eisenhower, Regan and Clinton spoke and widely advocated the elimination of this senseless amendment. I do not think that any person would challenge the democratic views and rational thinking of the said presidents. These were great presidents and the real leaders of their country. And I am sure that if they were represented by the majority in the US congress, they would have tried to eliminate this amendment in the legislative order.

Now, if we view the same aspect through the different prism, for example, of Great Britain which was first to apply democratic principles, the restrictions in other countries seem especially senseless. Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher were leading within three parliamentary terms and no one has legally restricted their terms. So why didn't English people with their ancient political tradition undertake the step to restrict the terms for one the same person? The answer is simple: English people did not think that such a restriction develops democracy or leads to progress. They considered that such a restriction is a sort of a prejudice, which is correct, in fact. If we view the past from today, in the light of the public confession of George Bush, it is unclear what would be good for the United States and the whole world - either the restriction of the presidential term for two not more than twice or election of Bill Clinton for the third term?

The legislative elimination of the limit is urgent.

First of all, as I have already mentioned before, the initial meaning of this limit in the United States had nothing to do with democratic principles and there have been the ambitions of a separate political party, which had majority seats in the US congress and Truman (who was just a casual president after Roosevelt) yielded to it.

Second, the limit is in fact harmful for a country, which is in the center of hard geopolitical fights, where a long term strategy is of vital importance.

Third, in this case, the life-long election of Ilham Aliyev is not implied and no one is going to eliminate elections.

Fourth, Ilham Aliyev's influence is so strong that he can even repeat the Russian experience, but such a model just undermines the influence to the institute of presidency and can lead to nothing but misunderstanding.

Fifth, any law must respond to modern realities and if it does not correspond to the activity of the state of public, the law is improved.The US constitution has 26 amendments and the first ten were adopted in three years after adoption of the Constitution. And nothing bad happened and they are proud of their main law.

Anar Mamedkhanov
Deputy of Milli Medjlis of Azerbaijan