Vardan Voskanyan: Current Baku administration behaves like provincial who became rich by accident
Panorama.am has contacted Vardan Voskanyan, Associate Professor of the Chair of Iranian Studies of Yerevan State University, for comment on recent remarks by the Ambassador of Pakistan to Azerbaijan.
- Mister Voskanyan, recently Azeri media actively spread a statement by Inayatullah Kakar calling Safarov “hero of the entire Muslim world.” How do you comment on this?
- Firstly, judging by the information of Azeri media, the statement does not express the views of Islamabad – it was merely the personal opinion of the Ambassador. Secondly, be it in the West or in Muslim East, Ramil Safarov’s act can only be described as a foul murder. Cynical statements about his alleged heroism, even within the Muslim world, are nothing else but the result of morbid imagination of separate politically committed figures, who naturally have neither powers nor rights to speak on behalf of all Muslims.
Also, it is noteworthy that in Pakistan itself, to all appearances, certain public and political circles have absolutely different opinion. On the same day when, as quoted by Azeri media, Inayatullah Kakar made such a statement, Pakistan’s English-language newspaper Pakistan Today published an article on the extradition and pardon of Ramil Safarov, calling him an “axe killer” as well as widely quoting Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.
- What could be the reason behind such a statement by a representative of a country where too many people have no idea about Azerbaijan as a state?
- There could be different theories. It’s no secret that current Baku administration, dizzy by oil revenues, even in the European arena behaves like a provincial who became rich by accident, trying to solve its problems not intellectually and by everyday laborious task but through bribery. According to estimates of international experts, Pakistan is among the countries which have the most corrupt system of government.
However, it is also likely that Azeri media ascribed to Pakistan’s Ambassador the words written by themselves or distorted his words, especially as all Azeri media without exception distorted the Ambassador’s name. This cannot be ruled out, especially as the latest stupid propaganda fraud – “letter from ASALA” – was fabricated on the same provincial level, within Aliyev agitprop.