Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12
By Ali Mustafayev – Trend:
The presidential election in Azerbaijan passed without any outside intervention in the voting process, ex-parliamentarian, head of a monitoring mission from Finland Juha Korkeaoja said at a press conference on April 12.
"Our observations showed that no election campaigns were conducted near the polling stations, entrances to polling stations were open for all, including foreign observers, which also proves transparency," Korkeaoja said.
The head of the Finnish group of observers noted that the Central Election Commission (CEC) of Azerbaijan also provided all necessary conditions for organizations from France and the United States to hold polls among voters.
"All of the abovementioned is the best indicator of openness of the presidential election in Azerbaijan," he said.
Azerbaijan held a presidential election on April 11.
Eight candidates were registered for the election. Six of the candidates were nominated by political parties, one candidate was a self-nominee and another candidate was nominated by an initiative group.
The incumbent head of state, Chairman of the New Azerbaijan Party Ilham Aliyev has garnered 86.03 percent of votes in the election, according to the votes counted in 5,641 polling stations.
The election was observed by 894 international observers (61 organizations, 59 countries) and 58,175 local observers.
The voter turnout was 74,51 percent. That is 3,962,123 of 5,332,817 voters cast ballots in the election.