Over the past month I have traveled throughout practically the whole Southern Caucasus, collecting the border stamps of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. It has been an amazing experience, conducting trainings every day for young (and some older) political activists, mostly on capacity building and communication skills, but also specifically several times on 'blogging & politics'.

The people I have met have all been truly inspiring and I would have had the highest hopes of the future of this region, if it weren't for the depressing state of democracy and general political governance at the moment. Azerbaijan has just passed a referendum in a predictable fashion, with made-up participation rates and an imaginary approval level of over 90%. As I wrote earlier, the constitutional changes put forward through the referendum are another step down towards the dark pit of authoritarianism.

In addition, Georgia is preparing for a new round of mass demonstrations and the once almost ubiquitously glorified president Saakashvili is doing all that's in his power to stay in power, which is never a good sign. Nobody knows exactly what is going to happen on the 9th of April and after, but the country could certainly come to a standstill.

Finally, Armenia is still suffering from last year's 1st of March lethal crackdown on the opposition that had gathered to demonstrate against the falsified presidential elections that February. With some of the opposition members still in prison, the country is highly polarized and this will only aggravate as elections are coming up for the position of the mayor of Yerevan. With 1/3 of the country's population living in Yerevan, this person is highly influential and now that the leader of the opposition, Levon Ter-Petrosian, has announced his candidacy, tense times are again ahead.