On the 6-th of October 2006, there was taken place re-run Municipal elections in 603 municipalities of Azerbaijan. The CEC and the Ombudsman states that the elections were conducted without serious violations, however the national and international observers piled up a long list of violations, from external interference to the voting up to the mismatch of the number of voted people and ballot papers from the ballot boxes. “The local democracy is not formed in Azerbaijan yet” thinks the Congress Mission of the Council of Europe. (11-OCT-06)
Written by Shahla Ismailova / HRH Baku on the basis of materials from Turan Information Agency, Iterfax-Azerbaijan Agency, Regnum Az, Newspaper Echo, report of the EMC; photos by Shahla Ismailova /HRH Baku, Turan Information Agency
4524 candidates (including 239 women) were taking part in the fight over 1931 vacant places in 603 municipalities in 82 election districts of Azerbaijan. Out of 810 thousand voters about 273 thousand people, or 34%, voted on elections. The elections were observed by 8,5 thousands of local and 32 international monitors. The final results of elections are promised to be officially declared within 30 days by Central Election Commission.
As to the political affiliation of the candidates, 2171 candidates are from the ruling political party “Yeni Azerbaijan”, 2096 are considered independent and the rest is shared between different political parties of Azerbaijan, including the opposition parties.
The Congress Mission of CE criticized the course of elections
The Congress Mission of the Council of Europe, monitoring the municipal elections in Azerbaijan, recorded a number of serious violations, such as external interference into the voting process, facts of “family” voting, repetition of the same signatures in the lists, mismatch in the number of the voted people and number of the ballot papers from the ballot boxes. The head of Mission Lyudmila Sfirloaga pointed out the low level of preparedness of the members of district election commissions as well as low level of participation of opposition parties in elections. She stressed the necessity of the conduct of special programs to raise the level of elections conduct in the country.
Ombudsman thinks there was no serious violations 
The Ombudsman of Azerbaijan Elmira Suleymanova (on the right) stated that there had not been recorded any serious violations by the staff members of the Ombudsman office during the municipal elections.
According to her, 20 staff members of the Ombudsman office and herself were monitoring the municipal elections in different districts. She pointed out the absence of any serious violations on elections and said that just a few minor violations were recorded. She also stressed the importance of people’s taking part in elections for the local democratization.
CEC is satisfied with elections 
The head of CEC office – Mazahir Panahov (on the right) stated that CEC had received only 19 complaints on the conducted elections, which cannot influence the election results. He stated that the elections were conducted in democratic transparent circumstances and there was not received the complains about the cases, when the protocols had not been given to the observers.
Commenting the statement of Congress Mission of Council of Europe about a number of serious violations on elections, Mazahir Panahov said that he could not understand why the mission acts like that. He said that CEC would work on the investigation of the cases, reflected in the 19 received complaints within next 20 days since the voting day.
EMC recorded numerous violations
EMC – Election Monitoring Center, which is an independent NGO dealing with free and fair conducting of elections and is a member of ENEMO, released a statement on the conduct of repeated municipal elections in Azerbaijan.
Having observed the elections through its 212 observers in 273 precincts over 40 constituencies, the EMC recorded and piled dozens of violations due to which it concluded that the elections of 6 October 2006 were not conducted in a free and fair condition and as a result, the legislation of Azerbaijan and the requirements of international standards were violated.
There was reported low turnout participation that was characteristic for all of the constituencies in which the monitoring was conducted on the Election Day. According to the EMC’s calculations, the turnout participation in the constituencies changed between 12 and 20 % – much less than the figures officially announced. The analyses of the EMC show that in comparison with the previous elections, the sharp decrease in the turnout participation is connected with the weak belief of population in the fair conducting
of elections and with the fact that the municipalities have not yet formed as real local governance institutes.
EMC stated that the election commissions were not able to build their activity to meet the requirements of election legislation in the municipal elections either and did not display objective and independent activity. At the same time, in comparison with the previous elections, the EMC approves of substantial progressive changes that occur in the field of ConECs and PECs’ giving operative information to the public and observers on the election process and the registration of observers.
