Azerbaijan’s ruling party on Sunday won a clear victory in parliamentary polls boycotted by the mainstream opposition, an exit poll said, cementing President Ilham Aliyev’s grip on power in the ex-Soviet nation.
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Ali Kerimli, the leader of Azerbaijan’s Popular Front, said his party made a decision to stay aside because “the country lacks a proper political environment and legal base for conducting a democratic vote”.
“I urge Azerbaijan’s leaders to engage with their citizens and with the global community in an open and honest dialogue aimed at bringing human rights and rule of law back to the country”, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s democracy and human rights chairperson, Isabel Santos, said earlier this week.
Another major opposition party, the Republican Alternative (REAL), said it would not recognise the results.
Today, on November 1, parliamentary elections are held in Azerbaijan which is infamous for restraining human rights and freedoms. “There were queues in a few polling stations”. An electoral official denied the claims.
This year – for the first time in more than two decades – it chose not to send a mission, condemning the Azerbaijani government’s “crackdown on independent and critical voices”. “This election is taking place with no credible worldwide observers”, she notes.
The leading opposition party, Musavat, announced it was pulling out just four days before the vote.
Not a single election held in Azerbaijan since Aliyev came to power in 2003 has been recognised as free and fair by global observers. Voter turnout was recorded at 55.7 percent. The results reflected the public’s “trust in the government and state”, he said in a statement on the party’s website.
The head of state expressed satisfaction with active participation of the mission led by Ilyas Umakhanov in monitoring of the election process.
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Whilst it is too late to salvage Sunday’s parliamentary elections, it is not too late for the ruling Azerbaijani regime to right the serious wrongs being perpetrated in the country and to fix its relations with worldwide bodies. Changes to the election code have restricted free air time to only parties fielding candidates in 60 percent of the races for legislative seats, a requirement only the ruling YAP meets.
