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The United States continuously urged the Government of Azerbaijan to ensure a free and fair electoral process and to respect the freedoms of assembly, association, and speech. It is with regret that we conclude this election fell short of international standards, the statement of the U.S. Department of State reports.

The article notes that the United States agrees with this assessment and shares OSCE concerns about the elections in Azerbaijan which have passed with serious irregularities and Azerbaijan has to pay attention at that fact. Other credible non-government organizations such as the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center reported similar shortcomings.

On Election Day, procedural irregularities were observed including ballot box stuffing, serious problems with vote counting and failure to record the number of received ballots.

“Authorities interfered with the media and civil society routinely, sometimes violently interrupted peaceful rallies and meetings before and occasionally during the campaign period, and jailed a number of opposition and youth activists,” the document says.

The United States urges the Government of Azerbaijan to respect the freedoms of peaceful assembly, association, and speech and to restraint and avoidance of violence by all in the post electoral period.

On October 9 Azerbaijan held presidential elections where Ilham ALiyev took a victory with 84,58% votes. According to the preliminary data, Jamil Hasanli a single candidate from the oppositionist National Council of Democratic Forces is on the second place. He scored 5,54% of votes. The leaders of the "Musavat" party Isa Gambar, the head of the Popular Front Party Ali Kerimli, the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan Sardar Jalaloglu and leader of the movement “EL” Eldar Namazov have declared about "total violations" and frauds during the presidential elections. The candidate of the National Council Jamil Hasanli has also noted the mass election frauds and announced incumbent President Ilham Aliyev responsible that. Jamil Hasanli’s headquarter has regularly issued releases describing election violations in details - ballot stuffing, "carousels", pressure on observes, etc.