By Azay Guliyev

With just a couple of days before the U.S. Presidential Elections day, the interest of the international audience to this process continues to grow. Although it is unclear who will be the winner, undoubtedly that that this year`s election campaign differs greatly from the past ones.

In fact, the elections revealed the paradoxes and complexity of the US political system rather than convinced everyone that these elections are the brightest example of US democracy. As a person who closely follows the campaign I would like to especially emphasize the following:

1) These elections once again demonstrate the power of media and its influence on public opinion. Most of the prominent US Media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy journal publicly express their support to candidate from Democratic Party. It is not surprising that Mr. Donald Trump is not happy with this support to his rival. In his speeches and twits Mr. Trump called the media “dishonest and distorted” and accused media in double standards. Furthermore, Republican candidate noted that media deliberately misleads the public opinion by conducting the phony polls according to which Hilary Clinton is leading. Such a disproportion in terms of the support of the media is the thing need to be reconsidered.

2) This year’s campaign will be remembered with the wide claims of the “large scale voter fraud” as Donald Trump called it. Though for most of us, it is hard to believe that any voter impersonation can occur during the US Presidential elections, Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research states that only a third of Republicans say they have a great deal or quite a bit a confidence that votes will be counted fairly. As Vanessa Barford from BBC News wrote Justin Levitt, professor at Loyola Law School found 31 known cases of impersonation fraud in 1 billion votes cast in all US elections between 2000-2014. Besides, Donald Trump’s adviser Rudy Guliani told CNN that he recalled 720 dead people voting in the 1982 election in Chicago, “dead people generally vote for Democrats instead of Republicans” says the former mayor of New-York. I am not sure that these allegations are enough to claim something, but the facts itself are enough to be surprised.

3) Can you name couple of the candidates’ promises on the internal and foreign policy? The difficulty is not surprising. This year`s campaign is more famous for the compromising materials. We witness that the candidates are busier with revealing the faults and possible offenses of the rival rather than deep analysis of the issues of national and global importance.

4)Though I can’t call myself an expert in the US Election system, I was confused with the fact that US President Barack Obama takes the side and expressed his support to Hilary Clinton. I wonder what kind of reaction it may cause in the international community if this case happened in another country, not saying Azerbaijan.

5) Institutional resources are involved for/against the candidates. Eleven days before the Presidential election in US, FBI director James Comey announced that the FBI had restarted the investigation against Hilary Clinton due to the additional emails discovered. This will definitely affect negatively the opinion of those who is going to vote for Hilary Clinton.

Azay Guliyev is Azerbaijani MP and the vice-president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA)

More about: