Azerbaijan, Baku, 23 July / Trend corr. E.Babayev/ Number of those supporting participation in presidential elections of this year is growing in Azerbaijan's leading opposition party Musavat. "I support party's participation in the elections under any circumstances. But reactionary changes were made in the Election Code, so there is poor hope that the elections will be democratic," a member of Musavat party's administration Vurgun Eyyub said to Trend on 22 July.
Azerbaijan will hold presidential elections on 15 October, 2008. In December, 2007, Musavat decided to participate in the elections. After passing of supplements and changes in the Election Code on 2 June, Musavat put participation in elections for discussion at its regional offices. The discussions are nearing completion and on 2 August a final decision will be made.
According to Eyyub, given the circumstances, he had to support boycotting the elections, but a single argument holds him back from doing this. " Azerbaijan's authorities do not want Musavat to participate in the elections under any circumstances. Anyway, previous version of Election Code did not enable completely democratic elections. In spite of all this, the authorities should not have made any negative changes in the Code. But they have done. And now it is obvious that Azerbaijani authorities do not want Musavat to participate in the presidential elections," he said.
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