AZERBAIJAN: On the road south from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, the only thing to break the monotony are billboards holding the maxims of Heydar Aliyev, the former KGB strongman who ruled Azerbaijan between 1993 and 2003, writes Nicholas Birch in Baku.
"Our young people are our future," reads one. Another quotes Uzbekistan's dictator, Islam Karimov: "a country ruled by Aliyev is a happy place". Both could do with a paint-job.
"It doesn't look like an oil-rich country, does it?" asks Ingilab Ahmadov, waving his hand out over a bleak landscape of saltpans and stunted shrub.
But Ahmadov knows better than most the extent of the treasure trove his country is sitting on. An independent candidate in Azerbaijan's parliamentary elections yesterday, he's also an economist specialising in oil revenue.
"This year, Azerbaijan earned $150 million [€127 million]," he explains. "Next year, that will rise to $650 million. In the near future, that could go up to an annual $15 billion. For a country whose current budget is $2 billion, that's a staggering amount."
Perfectly positioned to be the western outlet for the Caspian Sea's vast hydrocarbon reserves, this former Soviet state's significance increased vastly this May with the opening of a pipeline connecting Baku to the Mediterranean.
In a world increasingly thirsty for petrol, the pipeline enables western buyers to sidestep Azerbaijan's neighbours, Iran and Russia, neither of which are seen as reliable partners.
The question is whether Azerbaijan's experiment in democracy has been any more successful.
Heydar Aliyev's son, Ilham, may have had to call elections to ensure his succession in 2003. But international observers lambasted the poll as a sham marred by widespread irregularities and violent repression of opposition. Since then, many Azeris say, the ruling clique's control of the country has only increased.
While 40 per cent of the country lives on less than $25 a day, ruling party notables sit snug in huge villas in the upmarket Baku district of Ganjlik. An investigation by the monthly magazine Hesabat this April concluded that nine of Azerbaijan's 10 wealthiest men were government officials.
"Talk of democracy in Azerbaijan is empty," says Arastun Orujlu, chairman of the East-West Research Centre, an independent NGO in Baku."What we have here is a mafiocracy, nothing else."
Under increasing pressure from his western allies to improve on the last electoral experience, Ilham Aliyev issued a decree last week calling for the use of invisible ink to avoid multiple voting. Local NGO members have also been permitted to go to polling stations as observers. Few observers, Azeri or foreign, think the changes will make a difference.
"The pre-election environment this time round was so similar to 2003 that I could have copied and pasted the report we wrote back then," says Matilda Bogner, local representative for the Washington-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch. She refers to the state's systematic obstruction of opposition rallies, and the arrest of about 30 outspoken critics.
"Okay, so this time non-government candidates have been permitted to stand," she adds. "But can you call it progress if they're not allowed to campaign?" Following the recent transfers of power in Ukraine, Georgia and Kirghizstan, Azerbaijan would appear an obvious candidate for another revolution.
Despite their preference for peaceable talk of evolution, that certainly appears to be the hope of some members of the opposition.
"There are two possibilities - either the government resorts to massive fraud, or it recognises our victory," said opposition Popular Front leader Ali Kerimli last week.
"If the vote is fixed, we will employ all means either to get the elections annulled, or to demand Ilham Aliyev's resignation."
Down in the southern town of Lenkiran, opposition members talk excitedly of travelling up to Baku for protest marches on tomorrow. Most Azeris expect election results to be greeted with violence.
Even among the ranks of the opposition, though, there are plenty who doubt Azerbaijan can go the way of neighbouring Georgia.
"The state is much stronger here," explains Elman Sallayev, a senior member of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party. "And our oil wealth means the West has much more of an interest in maintaining stability."
While he wishes the US and the EU would put more pressure on the Azeri government, he also admits having doubts about his own people's will for change.
"Coming back after five years out of the country, I was astonished at the depth of cynicism here," he says. "People just don't believe it is possible to change things. They're just as suspicious of us reformers."
The same pessimism saps the energies of the opposition group in Lenkiran.
"People here are so poor, they're more interested in making money than democracy," says Lenkiran businessman Tavakul Guliyev.
"In their own kitchens, everybody supports the opposition," agrees Shali Huseynov, a dissident imprisoned several times. "But in the street, they smile and say nothing."