No campaigning observed at polling stations in Azerbaijan - Russian observer

No campaigning or other illegal actions were observed at polling stations during parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, Russian MP Aleksey Zhuravlev said at a press conference in Baku, Trend reports.

“We visited a fairly big number of polling stations, looked at what was happening there, carefully assessed the environment,” the MP said. “I would like to point out several aspects. The first one is the organization of the elections at a fairly high level. With regard to international requirements, all technical issues were met absolutely clearly.”

Zhuravlev also noted a great number of observers at polling stations.

“It was striking that there were a lot of observers, both local and international ones, at the polling stations,” the MP added. “First of all, I would like to note that all observers were provided with the necessary access from the point of view of observing the elections, which is important.”

Zhuravlev also commented on the application of special markings on the thumbs of voters.

“All observers watched carefully when people approached, and in the ultraviolet it was clearly visible that a voter was voting for the first time,” the MP added.

Zhuravlev further mentioned the number of MP candidates.

“There is quite a great number of MP candidates in the ballots, and this is very interesting, in my opinion,” the MP said. “This indicates the legitimacy of the elections. This is big competition. I personally would like to note that in some constituencies the number of women exceeds the number of men. This is very important both for the electoral process and for the legitimacy of the elections.”

Summarizing, Zhuravlev added that in general, the elections were legitimate, and held in competitive environment.

The parliamentary elections of the sixth convocation were held in Azerbaijan on Feb. 9. 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.

Throughout the day, 5,573 permanent polling stations operated in 125 constituencies of the country. There were 5,329,460 registered voters.

Some 883 international observers and 77,790 local observers monitored 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.