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Voter turnout in Sunday parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan was 25 percent, according to a polls monitoring conducted by the Institute for Democratic Initiatives (IDI), Turan agency reports.

According to a statement issued by the IDI in the evening of 1 November, the turnout data was issued taking into consideration the “carousels.” “The official numbers differ from the real ones. This once again comes to prove that there were serious irregularities during the polls,” the IDI said. The voter turnout was 55 percent, according to the official information released by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC).

According to preliminary results, ruling Yeni Azerbaijan party members will take up more than half of the parliamentary seats, while no real opposition representative got into the parliament, Turan highlights.

The National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF) called the November 1 polls “the most shameful in the history of Azerbaijan.” Almost 500 candidates withdrew from the elections because of the numerous violations, while the voter turnout did not exceed 10 percent in reality, according to the data of the NCDF. “The ‘carousel’ groups formed by the government in advance helped to rise the turnout rate artificially. The deputies will certainly declare a list of people prepared beforehand. The people and international community see them as appointees rather than elected deputies,” the NCDF said, as cited by Turan. “The Aliyev regime, ruling over Azerbaijan for more than 20 years, once again seizes the authority from the people.”

According to Oxu.az, 26 people, who got a deputy mandate for the first time, will start their work in the autumn session of the parliament with the current MPs.

“Unlike the previous elections, the pre-election campaign remained unnoticed, as well as the polls day. No tension, no passions, no stirs. For the first time since 1990, the parliamentary elections went unnoticed without evoking a special interest in the politically active part of the society. Everything was more than foreseeable and decided first of all because no preconditioned are remaining in Azerbaijan for changing the political status quo,” Haqqin.az writes. The website notes that among the new deputies there are also well-forgotten ones from the first parliament of the country.

Azer Gasimli, a candidate from ReAl movement (Republican Alternative), told the website Caucasian Knot that the electoral commissions exerted pressure on their members as they protested against the law violations. He said a few days before the polls, school principals instructed the form masters to go to the elections with 10 or 15 parents of their students to vote for a pro-government candidate. In addition, district electoral commission members stuffed ballot boxes in some polling stations in the evening. After the vote count, commission members refused to give copies of the records to Gasimli’s representatives.
Akif Hamidov, Gasimli’s representative, said, that in one of the polling stations, 73 voting papers were considered invalid, which shows people’s lack of trust to the elections. “The voters either did not mark anything on the ballot papers, or marked all the candidates,” he told the website.

Natig Jafarli, the executive secretary of ReAl who also was an MP candidate, told the Caucasian Knot that even given the unequal conditions of the pre-election campaign, the authorities again took up clumsy falsifications.

In 35th Khatai district, where the Social Democratic and Umid party leaders had received equal votes, the CEC decided to null the poll results. The leader of the Social Democrats told Haqqin.az that he had not received any official notice about the decision and learnt about it from the press.

The camera in Astarin electoral district N77 recorded a mass ballot stuffing, Radio Azadlig reported, according to Minval.az. The video shows a man stuffing the ballot boxes, going away from them and starting to sing mugham.

“Falsifications took place during the elections. Each voter dropped five or ten ballot papers in the boxes. Some religious figures did not allow the commission to mark their fingers with invisible ink because they had had ablution,” said Elza Seidjahan, a singer and an MP candidate, Jebhe.info reports, according to Oxu.az.

The singer noted that the chairpersons of the polls stations turned a blind eye on many irregularities, and pressure was exerted on the observers, which even included offering bribe. The representative of Tahir Suleymanov, her main opponent, exerted pressure on simple people. He invited her observers to another room and said they must change ballot boxes.

Panah Husein told the Azerbaijani service RFE/RL that he and his family had been summoned to the police because of an appeal. “I think this was connected with my complaint of the poll results,” he said. In the evening of November 1, Husein reported that the results recorded by his observers were different from those declared by the CEC. Mazahir Panahov, the head of the CEC, said Panah Husein’s observers had seized the ballot papers from two voters and run away.

Opposition Musavat party told a press conference that only 25 of the 73 candidates it nominated were registered. However, even those 25 candidates faced restrictions in holding the election campaign.

On 1 November, Azerbaijan held elections, where 767 candidates were struggling for the 125 seats in the Parliament. According to preliminary data issued by the CEC, the ruling Yeni Azerbiajan party won, receiving 70 seats in the legislative body of the country. The voter turnout was 55.7 percent: 2.89 million voters out of 5.2 million took part in the elections. The elections were observed by 503 international monitors from 40 organisations, including PACE, Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS and the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic-speaking Countries. There were reports about numerous irregularities in the polling stations. In particular, there were cases of ballot stuffing, voting carousels, and so on.

International agencies took up rather stern stance over the upcoming parliamentary elections. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) announced that, due to restrictions imposed by the Azerbaijani authorities, ODIHR had no choice but to cancel its mission to observe the country’s parliamentary elections. The European Parliament followed the suit.