Vote Monitor Faults Election in Azerbaijan

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: October 16, 2008

BAKU, Azerbaijan — A European election observer gave a stinging assessment on Thursday of Azerbaijan’s presidential election, provoking an angry response from local journalists and officials, who said Europe had applied double standards.

Azerbaijan held its presidential election on Wednesday, in which the incumbent, Ilham Aliyev, won more than 88 percent of the vote. The opposition boycotted, saying the government had twisted the rules so much that fair competition was impossible.

In sharp language that appeared to come as a surprise to the large group of journalists and officials assembled at a news conference here in the capital, Andres Herkel, the leader of the Council of Europe parliamentary delegation, said that the election was “a very good swimming exercise, but unfortunately, it’s an empty pool.”

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His remarks drew angry questions, mostly from Azeri journalists, who were upset about what they considered to be a double standard applied to Azerbaijan, compared with its neighbor, Armenia, with whom it fought a war in the early 1990s. In the Azeri view, Armenia gets more favorable treatment by the West.

“Outrageous!” a man shouted from the audience. “Your personal views are outrageous.”

Armenia had a contested presidential election this year in which the authorities killed a number of people while dispersing a crowd of demonstrators. The European monitors’ initial evaluation was largely positive, which fueled suspicions on Wednesday that a double standard was being applied, but their report issued later was much more critical.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/world/europe/17azeri.html

AZERBAIJAN: ELECTION DAY PROVES A SNOOZE

Mina Muradova 10/15/08

Exit polls gave President Ilham Aliyev an impressive re-election victory in Azerbaijan’s presidential election on October 15. Although no official results have yet been released, the celebrations began early at the governing Yeni Azerbaijan Party headquarters.

“The victory of Ilham Aliyev is a victory for all the Azerbaijani people,” Yeni Azerbaijan Party Executive Secretary Ali Ahmadov declared at an evening rally in Baku, the APA news agency reported. Ahmadov claimed that the 46-year-old Aliyev won re-election by “a wide margin.”

According to the preliminary results of an exit poll conducted by the non-governmental organization coalition Free, Transparent, Fair Elections in 125 polling stations, President Aliyev secured 85.7 percent of the vote.

Opposition candidate Igbal Agazade, chairman of the Umid (Hope) Party, came a distant second with 3.5 percent of vote, the coalition’s preliminary findings showed.

A second exit poll, run by the Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan and the ELS Independent Research Center, gave Aliyev 82.6 percent of the vote. In these results, Agazade made a slight gain, edging up to 5 percent of the vote for a second-place finish.

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http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav101508.shtml