Azerbaijan, Baku, 25 February / corr. Trend I. Alizadeh/ There have been contradictions between the parliament heads and the parliament commission on cultural issues in Azerbaijan. The vice-speaker of the parliament said that the bill on Creative People and Cultural Unions, developed by the Commission on Cultural Issues contradicts the current laws. "Therefore this bill cannot be passed," the vice-speaker Valeh Alasgarov said in the meeting of the Parliamentary Commission on Cultural Issues held on 25 February.
The bill on Creative People and Cultural Unions was discussed in order to submit it for the second reading at parliament. The bill envisages the financing of creative people and cultural unions by the government.
Alasgarov said that several articles of the law contradict each other.
"Furthermore, the bill contradicts the Azerbaijani law, namely 2.2 article on Non-government Organizations, on Budget System and article 2.4 of the Tax Code and the Convention on Government Support for NGO. Changes must be made to the above-mentioned Laws in order to pass a bill on Creative People and Cultural Unions," the vice president said.
The financing of creative people by government could cause serious problems in the future. "At present there is only one Union of Writers. The number of organizations where writers are represented could reach five in the future. Which of them then would be financed by the government? If government allocates funds to only one of them, the others could appeal to the court which in turn could proceed to the European Court on Human Rights resulting in the Azerbaijani government being fined" he said.
Rafael Huseynov, member of the commission on culture and the author of the bill did not agree with the vice speaker. "I have no idea why people have a negative approach towards creative people and cultural organizations. This law is of great political significance" the MP said.
The chairman of the Commission Nizami Jafarov asked for the support of the vice speaker to adopt the bill in parliament. Jafarov said that his commission is not able to make changes to the Law on Budget and Tax Code. The department head of the Ministry of Finance Kagani Rzayev said that the Ministry is against the bill.
The commission decided to bring up the bill for discussion at the Azerbaijani parliament.
