EU welcomes government's agreement with OSCE on observation of presidential election
By Aynur Jafarova
Head of the EU delegation to Azerbaijan Roland Kobia welcomes the agreement between the government of Azerbaijan and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to enable an election observation mission to monitor the presidential elections in Azerbaijan, which will be held on October 9.
Kobia said in a statement that the final assessment will demonstrate the progress made by Azerbaijan in terms of implementation of its international commitments on elections, a key area for the democratic development in the country, the EU Baku office told Trend news agency on August 26.
"A meaningful size, a professional and balanced composition of the observation mission and an unimpeded working environment in situ for fulfilling their duties should provide the right framework for successful work of the mission on the basis of their overall ODIHR mandate. Together with the presence of other national and international observers, it will add international legitimacy to this phase of the election process. We reiterate full support for the ODIHR observation mission and to OSCE for their important work," the statement said.
Furthermore, the CIS Executive Secretariat told Trend that the first observers of the upcoming presidential elections from the long-term observation mission of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) will arrive in Azerbaijan in mid-September.
"In light of the mission's work in Baku, it is planned to form general staff out of the CIS mission for the presidential election in Azerbaijan. First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Committee of the CIS Vladimir Garkun will also participate at the commencement of the mission's staff," the secretariat said.
The general staff of the observation mission will be headed by Yevgeniy Sloboda.
The CIS observation mission for the presidential elections in Azerbaijan will be headed by Chairman of the Executive Committee and Executive Secretary of the CIS Sergey Lebedev, the official website of the CIS Executive Committee said.
The decision was made at a meeting of the council of the permanent authorized representatives of the CIS member countries under the statutory and other bodies of the CIS, held in Minsk on August 20.
The CIS will send two missions to Azerbaijan in order to observe the presidential elections.
The long and short-term CIS missions will include approximately 250-300 observers from the CIS countries.
The missions will be formed openly and publicly on the basis of countries' proposals. They will include parliament members and diplomats, representatives of electoral commissions and executive authorities.
The monitoring of the presidential elections will be carried out in accordance with the principles of political neutrality and impartiality and non-interference in the electoral process and in the state's internal affairs.
The short-term observers will arrive a few days prior to voting.
The composition of both missions will be determined in the coming days by an order of the chairman of the organization's Executive Committee, the Secretariat said.
Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said August 15 that Azerbaijan has invited international organizations to observe the October 9 elections.
Earlier Central Election Commission chairman Mazahir Panahov said about 10,000 observers watched the previous elections. It is expected that a significant number of people will observe the elections this time and they are not required to obtain permission from anyone to do so.
Head of the OSCE Baku Office Koray Targay said on August 23 that around 310 professional observers from the OSCE ODIHR will observe the presidential elections in Azerbaijan. He said the OSCE observers would arrive in Azerbaijan on August 26. Some 30 of them are long-term observers, and 180 are short-term ones.
According to the Constitution, the president of Azerbaijan is elected for a five-year term through general, direct and equal elections, by free, private and secret voting.
Azerbaijani citizens who have the right of election, an initiative group of electors, political parties and blocs of political parties are entitled to nominating candidates.
To date 18 candidates have submitted necessary documents to the Central Election Commission for approval as presidential candidates and 15 of them have been approved.