13 May 2006 is the day of re-run Parliamentary Elections in 10 districts of Azerbaijan. However there is not observed any special interest to the Parliamentary elections, as the society considers that the major balance or rather the disbalance of political forces have already been outlined and the elections or rather fight over 10 seats cannot bring major changes. The majority of human rights defenders believe that, the lack of attention both by the national and international observers create additional opportunities for obvious fraud on elections and numerous human rights violations. (15-APR-2006)
Written by HRH Baku/Shahla Ismailova; materials from EMC; newspapers Ekho, Zerkalo, Yeni Musavat; Information agencies: Turan, DayAZ, TodayAz.
10 deputy seats from 125 are left vacant in the National Parliament as a result of canceling the election results in 4 districts by the CEC, and 6 districts by the Constitutional Court after the elections on the 6-th of November 2005. According to the information department of CEC, 144 candidates (from the initially 218 people, 69 of which were the candidates o Parliament for 6 November elections) will fight for the deputy mandates.
The director of Information Center “Elections” Igbal Babayev said that there were registered 380,600 voters for 10 districts, where the re-elections will take place. He noted that all the voters’ lists had already been available for public in front of the polling stations.
Violations by CEC and DEC
However, according to the information received form the Election Monitoring Center, there are observed a number of human rights and law violations related with elections which include the insufficient work of the CEC and DEC (for example there are numerous polling stations throughout Azerbaijan, where the voting lists have not been made public, though according to the election code they must be public available 65 days prior to election day).
According to the information received from Sulheddin Allahverdiyev – the chair of Polling Station #5 of the second Dec # 31 of Surakhany district – the DEC made repeated law violations. For example, there were held 22 meetings of DEC, where the chairs of all the Polling stations of the district must have participated, however Sulheddin Allahverdiyev received the invitation/notification to only 6 meetings.
Pressure
There are the cases when the candidates were pressured during the pre-election campaigns. The candidacy of Rubaba Mammedova, which ran for deputy mandate from the second DEC #9 of Binegedi district, was cancelled by the decision of the Court of Appeal. According to Rubaba Mammedova, prior to the court, the head of that DEC Nabi Khalilov met with her twice and “advised” to take her nomination back, for which Rubaba M. refused. After the refusal, he applied to the Court of Appeal grounding his complaint with her allegedly early propaganda. It makes sense to note that Rubaba Mammedova was running for deputies on 6 November 2006 from the same district.
Intervention by Executive Authorities 
According to the reports of Election Monitoring Center and the reports received from the candidates to Parliament, in a number of districts the representatives of executive authorities intervene into the pre-election process and use the administrative resources in favor of pro-governmental candidates.
For example, the candidate from Musavat Party – Arif Hajily, running the candidacy from the DEC #110 of Zagatala district noted that the administrative resources were used in a more rudely and obvious manner than it was observed during the elections on 6 November 2005. According to Arif Hajily, the new head of executive authority is running an obvious support campaign for pro-governmental candidate, for example even the desks which are distributed to the schools in Zagatala at the expense of state budget, are presented on behalf of that pro-governmental candidate.
