Azerbaijan’s Aliyev re-elected with 92% of the vote
- 9 February, 04:47
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has won another term in office with 92.12% of the vote in the snap election held on February 7, the country’s Central Election Commission said Friday.
Other presidential hopefuls - independent candidate Zahid Oruj won 2.19% of the votes, followed by Great Creation Party leader Fazil Mustafa with 2% of the vote. Other candidates scored less than 2% of the vote.
The election has been described as “restrictive” by international monitors. Namely, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE) said Thursday that the election took place “in a restrictive environment with no real political competition.”
The country’s major opposition parties boycotted the election, citing the lack of democratic environment in the country.
Aliyev announced the snap presidential election in December, without providing detailed reasons for holding them. The turnover of 92.12 percent is the highest in the country’s modern history. Another feature of the February election was that for the first time in the past three decades, elections were held across the entire internationally-recognized territories of the country, including the Krabakh region that had been under Armenian control until the war in 2020. It should be noted that Aliyev’s high turnover in the presidential election this year has to do with his increased popularity following the country’s victory over its arch-enemy Armenia.
