Azernews.Az

Municipal elections were held in Azerbaijan on Wednesday, with voter turnout reported at 31.86 percent, or 1,462,000 of the country’s population of over 8,000,000, according to the senior electoral body. The Central Election Commission (CEC) is expected to announce the tallies within two days.
About 31,000 candidates ran for a total of 15,682 seats in 1,718 local bodies. 16 political parties had joined the election race. The voting was conducted in 4,813 polling stations in 118 constituencies across the country.
Some 16,755 of the candidates were nominated by political parties, while 14,073 are independent and 147 nominated by initiative groups. 6,108 of the hopefuls were women.
The election was monitored by nearly 50,000 observers, including 54 international monitors representing 13 organizations and 18 countries.
Some 500 polling stations were equipped with webcams to ensure transparency during the election.
Ali Ahmadov, Executive Secretary of the governing Yeni (New) Azerbaijan Party (YAP), has praised the conduct of the elections.
"Another democratic and fair election has been held in Azerbaijan," Ahmadov told a news conference, regarding the vote as a milestone in the country’s democratic development.
He said YAP is the only party that has nominated candidates to all municipalities, and their number amounts to 15,630.
Ahmadov dismissed the allegations that major violations were committed during the polling.
He went on to say that the election once again proved that opposition parties lack human resources. "[For instance], Musavat ran with 100 candidates, which is an example of the party’s weakness."
Musavat said it had appealed to the CEC, claiming numerous irregularities. Its leader, Isa Gambar, alleged: "Overall, this was the most disgraceful election in Azerbaijan’s post-independence history."
Bilge Cankorel, head of the OSCE Office in Baku, speaking to reporters, noted that his organization did not officially observe the election and this mission was carried out by the Council of Europe. He said that, though the OSCE’s observation was informal, its local representation has received numerous complaints.
"These complaints concerned multiple voting and ballot stuffing. We have sent all complaints to the CEC for review," Cankorel said, adding that the election was organized well from the technical viewpoint.
Ramil Huseynov, the director of the Elections Information Center under the CEC, said a total of 40 complaints have been made through the organization’s hotline and mainly dealt with obtaining information about the location of polling stations.
Most of the diplomatic missions accredited in Azerbaijan did not delegate observers.
Terry Davidson, the spokesman for the US embassy in Baku, told the press that six groups of embassy representatives monitored the polling, with each comprising two US citizens and a translator. The observers monitored the voting in the capital Baku and in Sumgayit, the country’s third largest city, Davidson said, declining to elaborate on the outcomes of their observations.
Three representatives of the Norwegian embassy observed the polling in the Binagadi district of Baku. The French embassy monitored the election as well.
Other embassies, including the diplomatic missions of Turkey, Russia, Switzerland and Belarus, as well as the local representations of the United Nations and the European Union, did not observe the election.
Wednesday’s vote was the third municipal election held in Azerbaijan, following the local polls in 1999 and 2004.*