Gallup has a new poll out about approval ratings for countries of the former Soviet Union. At the bottom of the list is Ukraine. At the top ...... Azerbaijan. According to the poll, 77 percent of the population approve of the the job that the county's leaders are doing.
I want to know with whom they were talking. What language were they speaking? Did they have a government-supplied translator? I did not do any scientifically valid polling when I was in Azerbaijan, but I did talk to a lot of people. I certainly not say that more than 3/4 of the people I spoke with were supporting the leadership of the country. Of course, people didn't talk loudly about their dissent - but in private conversations they were quite honest about their dissatisfactions.
The recurring theme, however, was that people perceived that no realistic alternatives to the current regime existed.
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RFE/RL has an excellent article about this poll, which slices right to the heart of the problem: http://bit.ly/fSElW
And the videos linked to the article are stunning and heart-rending, especially since apparently none of this shocking brutality went punished or even investigated.
unbelievable.
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