Most Americans wouldn’t exactly jump at the chance to spend Christmas Day in Uzbekistan, but that is exactly how Dan Blessington got his start with IFES in 1994. The attorney had recently left his job working as legal advisor to the vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Election Commission and was looking for a career change.

Opportunity came calling with an offer from IFES to assist Uzbekistan’s Central Election Commission in the weeks immediately preceding the election on December 25.

“It was wild out there,” said Blessington. “I was supposed to meet a candidate who disappeared without a trace. I ended up talking to some of his associates and uncovered some disturbing facts. I remember going to the safe room at the embassy to tell them what happened. The candidate was ultimately found somewhat the worse for wear in a local hospital. It was a pretty scary place back then.”

Blessington’s career at IFES has taken him to some of the world’s most volatile places in the last decade. In 1998, he opened IFES’ Albania office, only to be evacuated shortly thereafter when an Albanian connection was suspected in the Al-Qaeda bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. In 1999, he entered Kosovo as an IFES consultant with the Kosovo Verification Mission, but was evacuated weeks later when NATO began bombing targets in Yugoslavia.

However harrowing, those experiences coincided nicely with the subject matter Blessington was studying as an advanced degree student at the Georgetown University Law Center.

“I was going back and forth between semesters at Georgetown studying international and comparative law and then practicing it for months at the time in places like Bosnia. It was a perfect situation.” He earned his LL.M from Georgetown in 1998.

In 2000, Blessington finally got a chance to open the IFES office in Macedonia, where he stayed for four years, before moving into his present position as IFES’ chief of party in Azerbaijan.

Updating Azerbaijan’s Election Code

Now based in Baku, Blessington advises Azerbaijan’s Central Election Commission and is one of the key players in an international effort to update the country’s election code before next year’s presidential vote. Azerbaijan’s government is considering reforms recommended by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, which is sponsoring a working group on the issue with Blessington, the chief lawyer on Azerbaijan’s Presidential Apparat and a representative of the Warsaw office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The reform effort will look at the independence and political diversity of Azerbaijan’s election commissions, the processes that govern election appeals, candidate registration, and numerous other issues. Blessington said Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev introduced several needed reforms by presidential decree in November 2005, but the changes have yet to be included in the election code.

In support of the working group, Blessington will invite political parties and civil society groups to a series of meetings at IFES offices to discuss the various models of electoral management bodies that exist in the world. He hopes the meetings will produce concrete recommendations that he can present to the Venice Commission group, which is expected to meet next in March.

An Azerbaijani voter studies IFES' voter education materials before the November 2005 parliamentary elections.

Giving Everyone “A Fair Shake”

The election code currently calls for Azerbaijan’s parliament, the Milli Majlis, to appoint candidates to the 18-member election commission – six representing the parliamentary majority, six representing minority parties in parliament, and six representing independent members of parliament. Some opponents of this formula say that the commission is not representative of Azerbaijan’s political party structure, and have called for “parity” among the various political forces. Still others say the commission members should be completely independent of any political ties.

“The government has expressed in very clear terms that it is completely open to looking at this issue,” said Blessington, noting a shift in the government’s original position.

Another key issue is the process that governs election complaints and appeals. While Azerbaijan’s election commission accepted some related recommendations made by the Venice Commission before the November 2005 elections, most expert observers believe that additional legislation in this area is essential.

Blessington believes the election code also needs to spell out more clearly the provisions dealing with candidate registration. Blessington said that while Azerbaijan is quite “progressive” when it comes to putting candidates on the ballot, there were cases where candidates were deregistered just days before the parliamentary elections in May 2006. Blessington said the current system needs more transparency and accountability.

“What we’re concerned about is that everybody gets a fair shake,” he said.

That being said, Blessington stressed that the Central Election Commission is one of Azerbaijan’s most progressive institutions. In comparison to other countries he has worked in, Blessington said the commission is more advanced. For example, the commission has a dedicated staff and a functioning secretariat including departments for legal issues, logistics and finance. The commission has also just completed inspection tours of 125 lower level constituency commissions to check their procedures and record keeping.

After the next meeting of the Venice Commission group, the government will prepare a revised draft of the election code amendments. It is expected that in the spring the draft will made available to the public. While timing and details are not yet decided, IFES and other members of the Venice Commission group plan to co-sponsor one or more public events to discuss the proposed amendments. It is expected that after these public discussions, the draft will be submitted to parliament.