"Democracy in Azerbaijan: Goals and Challenges" broke new ground, allowing open discussion of sensitive topics, and bypassing traditional government-controlled media by using the Internet.One question I faced in the press conference we held a couple of days before the forum was: “How is your forum going to affect the election?”
This was an interesting question – and a pretty easy one to answer. The goal, I said, was not to affect the election. Everyone knows the president of Azerbaijan is going to be re-elected.