Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev appears to have taken a lesson from
Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen: “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”
However, Aliyev has modified it to “victory first, votes second.” The authoritarian regime was slightly
embarrassed when the state media released the results of the election
showing Aliyev winning with 72.76 percent of the vote. The problem is
that the polls had not opened yet....