Independent monitoring fixes gross violations at Azerbaijani election

A group of regular voters has promulgated preliminary monitoring results of the October 15 presidential election in Azerbaijan. The press release that was disseminated today runs that the report, which was drafted on the basis of inputs from 1500 registered observers, has registered gross violations.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports that the group was set up on the basis of the NGO named "Centre for Election Monitoring", which was deprived registration by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Justice in May 2008.

The monitoring was held under the SPS (simultaneous poll sampling) method. The observation in numerous polling stations has shown that in 99.1 percent of cases the ballot-boxes had no seals, in 93.6 percent of polling stations the vote tabulation was not reflected in final minutes. At many polling stations, copies of the minutes did not match the originals, and in 7 percent of polling stations copies of the minutes were not given out to the observers.

Tabulation of minutes at constituency electoral commissions went without any gross violations (that is, the totals were based on the minutes received from local electoral commissions). The data on the won votes by all the candidates differ a little from the officially announced information, according to which Ilham Aliev has won about 89 percent of all the votes. According to the monitoring group, the voter turnover was 69 percent against the officially declared 75.6 percent.

At a number of stations, the independent observers were refused of their right to observe the voting.

The conclusions of the citizens' monitoring group run that the pre-election situation had prevented from holding free and competitive elections. The pre-electoral debates ran in the atmosphere of weak political discussions. Like at the 2005 parliamentary elections, the right to the freedom of assembly was not ensured. In the course of the election, the observers and voters were under pressure. A number of amendments to the Electoral Code were positive, however, major recommendations of international and local organizations were neglected.