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The famous international organization for freedom   of media “REPORTERS SANS FRONTIERS” has released the 2004-report on media situation in the world. The report, which is called The deadliest year for a decade: 53 journalist killed, reads that at least 53 journalists were killed in 2004 while doing their job or for   expressing their opinions, the highest annual toll since 1995. (7-JAN-2005)
 

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev signed a new decree pardoning 54 prisoners on 30 December, as the country prepared to celebrate the Day of Solidarity of Azeris around the world on New Year’s Eve. It was the fifth amnesty decree signed by Aliev since his election to the presidency in October 2003. (4-DEC-2005)

The OSCE has set up a fact-finding mission to monitor the Azerbaijani lands occupied by Republic of Armenia. The mission includes the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and representatives from Germany, Italy, Finland, Sweden as well as the OSCE Secretariat, a diplomatic source told AssA-Irada. The mission is scheduled to arrive in Baku late in January-early in February 2005 to further visit Upper Garabagh and monitor the occupied lands. A report will be prepared after the monitoring is over. Republic of Azerbaijan has lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s after a bloody conflict with Republic of Armenia. (3-JAN-2005)

West-leaning opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko took an landslide victory on Monday in Ukraine´s re-run presidential election. With about 97 percent of Sunday´s ballot counted, election officials said Yushchenko had a statistically unbeatable lead, with almost 53 percent against just under 44 percent for Moscow-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, whose campaign manager said there had been three million illicit votes and did not rule out legal challenges that could delay a final official result for days, reports HRH project coordinator Vugar Gojayev from Donetsk.  (27-DEC-2004)
 

Human Rights Center “Against Violence” (AVHRC) has monitored the pre-election, Election Day and post- Election situation on municipalities in the Republic of Azerbaijan and reports about more irregularities (23-DEC-04).

“Although the general climate was calm, open and   friendly the delegation of Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the   CE observed a number of serious irregularities the nature of which could   prejudice the electoral process”, said the Head of the   delegation Vim Van Geldera, who monitored elections about in 80 polling stations. (20 DEC 2004)

In her article, One more falsified election in Republic of Azerbaijan: Municipal elections , the Azerbaijani human rights activist Shahla Ismayilova describes how the municipality elections were falsified in the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Today, the reality shows that the word “elections” causes sad smile in the Republic of Azerbaijan society. Our country has great experience of monitoring the fraudulent elections in the past 10 years, the top of which was during the presidential elections. We had the whole pack of horror last year – from roundabout voting up to severe street battles. (20-DEC-2004)

The municipal elections were held in the Republic of Azerbaijan on 17 December, 2004.  38,041 candidates ran for 21622 places in 2732 municipalities. 95 % of candidates were men, 5 % – women. 35.5 % of candidates are people who are younger than 40, 39.8 % are people who are at age of 40 to 50, 17.4 % – of 50 to 60 and 3 % of candidates are ones who are older than 60.  (19-DEC-2004)

Today municiplaity elections are held in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Baku-based Election Monitoring Centre (EMC) works in the direction of the development of the election system, improvement of the election legislation, organization of monitoring in the election process, creation of the democratic election environment. Today, the EMC conducts monitoring process on municipality elections via corps of domestic observers consists of NGO members and volunteers in 38 district election commisiions (DEC) of Republic of Azerbaijan Republic. (17-DEC-2004)