Aliyev's Amendments

Opposition leaders and the Council of Europe are upset over a probably fraudulent referendum which scrapped term limits for the country's presidency. This referendum was a ploy by the regime of current president Ilham Aliyev to keep legal democratic trappings around his increasing dictatorship. While I agree that the international community shouldn't play along with this, I see little chance of the fundamentals of the situation changing in the near future. Aliyev rule remains popular, as the father ended the Karabakh War, while the son has benefited from the country's natural gas wealth, and I see little grassroots support for shaking up the system.