BAKU: According to early results from Sunday's snap parliamentary election, the ruling party of Azerbaijan maintained its majority. This was the nation's first election since a lightning-fast war to retake Karabakh, a separatist province, a year ago.
The vote was criticized by the rights watchdog Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which stated that it did not live up to democratic standards.
Early results from the Central Election Commission, as published by the TASS news agency, showed that President Ilham Aliyev's party was expected to win 68 of the 125 seats in parliament. It held sixty-nine seats in the previous parliament.
In the energy-rich country, just over two million voters cast ballots, making the turnout at the polls' closing time of 37.3%, according to Mazahir Panakhov, the head of the Central Election Commission.
Numerous more seats, according to exit polls, would go to candidates who support the government in practice despite their seeming independence from major parties, as well as smaller pro-government groups.
According to OSCE election monitors, there had been "barely visible" election campaigning.
In the energy-rich country, just over two million voters cast ballots, making the turnout at the polls' closing time of 37.3%, according to Mazahir Panakhov, the head of the Central Election Commission.
Numerous more seats, according to exit polls, would go to candidates who support the government in practice despite their seeming independence from major parties, as well as smaller pro-government groups.
According to OSCE election monitors, there had been "barely visible" election campaigning.
Kazakhstan
Until Azerbaijan's retake of Karabakh, where ethnic Armenians had lived in de facto independence for thirty years until the fall of the Soviet Union, this was the first parliamentary vote in that territory.
Aliyev, who has been in office since 2003, acted quickly to build on that win and, according to election officials, secured a fifth term as president in February with more than 92% of the vote.
After nearly all of the more than 100,000 ethnic Armenian people of Karabakh left, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing in the region.
That accusation was refuted by Azerbaijan. Rebuilding the area and settling Azerbaijanis who fled during the 1990s war with Armenia are its goals. About 42,000 people in Karabakh were registered to vote on Sunday, according to the Central Election Commission.
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