Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov. 5 /Trend, M.Aliyev/
The Central Election Commission (CEC) of Azerbaijan has prepared a report on the November 7 parliamentary elections.
The report says that both polling stations and election constituencies have been supplied with necessary equipment and are ready for the election day.
The report says that 1412 took signature sheets to participate in the parliamentary elections, only 1115 collected signatures and submitted the signature sheets along with the other documents to the election constituencies. 72 of those who returned the signature sheets withdrew their candidacy before the constituencies considered their documents, the election constituencies considered the documents of 1043 candidates. 738 candidates were registered. The candidacy of 302 persons were not registered because of serious irregularities in the documents, incorrect information about the sources of income, property, faults in the signature sheets that were not eliminated despite the warnings. 53 of the registered candidates withdrew their candidacies, and finally the names of 688 persons were included into the ballot papers. 94 of the candidates are women.
CEC received 239 appeals in October. 172 of them were connected with the registration of the candidates, in 4 cases the appellant withdrew his appeal. The rest 168 appeals were considered, 131 of them were not changed as they were the decisions of the relevant election constituencies, in 35 cases the appeals were granted ad as a result of it 35 were registered at the CEC. In one case the registration of the candidate was cancelled, and in one case the appeal by a candidate for canceling the registration of another candidate was rejected. CEC was commissioned to reconsider 5 appeals basing on the decision of Baku Appeals Court and 2 appeals basing on the decision of the Supreme Court, 7 of the appeals were solved in favor of the candidates. In 49 cases the appeals were rejected, in 11 cases the appeals were dropped as the subject of discussion was solved, in 6 cases the appeals were returned, in one case the decision on withdrawing the candidacy was cancelled and the citizen's candidacy was restored.
63 media outlets (38 newspapers, 13 news agencies, 12 TV and radio), which offered paid air time for election campaign of the candidates, informed the central Election Commission about the payment. More than 5,000 boards were installed for the candidates' campaign materials. According to the Electoral Code, local executive officials allocated 4,930 venues (2,676 open, 2,254 closed) in 3,440 residential areas for the meeting of the candidates with the voters.
Totally 46,569 local observers were registered for the parliamentary elections. 1,705 observers were registered at the CEC and 102 of them are from the political parties, 560 from the non-governmental organizations, three - on the initiative of the registered candidates and others - on the personal initiative. 43,153 of the local observers were accredited at the electoral district commissions to observe voting process in certain constituencies. 8,177 of them represent political parties and 5,372 - non-governmental organizations and 29,604 will observe the elections on their own initiative.
1,026 observers from 19 international (foreign) organizations, including PACE, Council of European Union, EU representation in Baku, European Parliament, TurkPA, OSCE PA, OSCE/ODIHR, CIS, GUAM, embassies of the US, UK, Kazakhstan, Norway, Bulgaria, Poland, Japan and Belgium, as well as European Election Monitoring Academy, were accredited at CEC. There are citizens of 48 countries among the international observers. 43 foreign journalists from nearly 20 foreign media organizations, including Reuters, BBC, Al-Jazeera, TRT, Associated Press, France Press, EPA, Anatolian news agency, Ihlas news agency (IHA), Dogan news agency (DHA), Daily Ettehad were also accredited at CEC.
500 polling stations were equipped with web-cameras for online watching the voting process via Internet. According to the Electoral Code, ELS Independent Research Center was registered at CEC for conducting exit-poll on the voting day.
CEC states that information about the voters' turnout will be delivered five times and voting results few hours later ending of the voting process to CEC and its website via Automated Information System network.
The parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan are scheduled for November 7, 2010. Previous parliamentary elections were held in November 2005. Parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan are held by the majority system in 125 constituencies.