Georgian MP praises holding of parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan

By Trend

Parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan took place in a transparent, democratic atmosphere, Otar Danelia, the MP from the current ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia (GDDG) party, told Trend.

“As part of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC), we monitored the parliamentary elections in Baku,” Danelia said. “We visited many polling stations both in the city center and on the outskirts, and we didn’t notice any cases of violation.”

“We visited the central polling stations and others, too,” the MP noted. “The elections took place in independent, democratic atmosphere in each of the polling stations that we visited.”

Danelia added that the observers were met with great respect, noting that all the conditions for monitoring were created, so Azerbaijan can be proud of this.

The elections, which began at 08:00 (GMT +4), ended at 19:00.

Some 1,314 candidates were registered within the early parliamentary elections.

The candidacies of 246 people were nominated by 19 political parties, 1,057 were self-nominated, 11 - by initiative groups.

Twenty-one percent accounted for female candidates while 79 percent – male candidates.

As many as 5,573 permanent polling stations operated in 125 constituencies of the country.

Some 883 international observers and 77,790 local observers were monitoring the voting process. Among the local observers, 35,152 were representatives of political parties. International observers represented 58 countries and 59 organizations.

Exit polls were conducted by AJF & Associates Inc. (US) jointly with Citizens’ Labor Rights Protection League, the Rey Monitoring Center, and the French OpinionWay Research Institute together with the “Human Rights in the XXI Century – Azerbaijan” Foundation.