BAKU: Azerbaijan's ruling party retained its majority in early parliamentary elections on Sunday, preliminary results showed, in the country's first vote since it launched a lightning offensive a year ago to recapture the breakaway territory of Karabakh.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a human rights watchdog, criticized the vote, saying it fell far short of democratic standards.
President Ilham Aliyev's party was on track to win 68 of the 125 seats in parliament, according to preliminary results from the Central Election Commission reported by the Appraisal news agency. It had 69 seats in the outgoing parliament.
Just over two million people in the energy-rich nation cast ballots, bringing turnout as polling stations closed to 37.3%, Central Election Commission head Mazahir Panakhov said.
Exit polls suggested dozens of other seats would go to candidates who are nominally independent of political parties but in practice support both the government and minor pro-government parties.
OSCE election observers said the election campaign had been “barely visible”.
“The early parliamentary elections on 1 September were held in a restrictive political and legal environment that does not allow for genuine pluralism and resulted in uncompetitive elections,” the OSCE mission said in a statement.
The opposition Musavat party refused to recognise the legitimacy of the new parliament and called for a new vote. Other opposition groups had boycotted the elections.
“The vote was accompanied by widespread violations, including multiple votes by the same individuals and groups, ballot box manipulation and pressure on observers,” Musavat said.
Karabakh
It was the first parliamentary vote since Azerbaijan retook Karabakh, where ethnic Armenians had enjoyed de facto independence for three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Aliyev, in power since 2003, moved quickly to build on that victory, winning a fifth presidential term in February with more than 92 percent of the vote, according to electoral authorities.
Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing in Karabakh after nearly all of its more than 100,000 ethnic Armenian residents fled the area.
Azerbaijan has denied the accusation and is rebuilding the region and resettling Azerbaijanis who fled during the war with Armenia in the 1990s. The Central Election Commission said about 42,000 people in Karabakh were registered to vote on Sunday.
