Experts of civil society criticize the pre-election situation

Baku/09.04.18/Turan: A group of representatives of civil society (14 people) distributed on Monday an Evaluation Document on the extraordinary presidential elections on April 11. Despite the president's formal right to schedule early elections, from the point of view of the principles of democracy, it looks illegitimate. "Because the pre-election environment and electoral legislation do not provide for the conditions for free and fair elections, they do not meet international standards, the main opposition structures - the National Council of Democratic Forces, the Musavat Party, the Popular Front and the REAL movement refused to participate in the elections. Elections without participation of the main opposition forces are held in the absence of alternative and the domination of one party - "Yeni Azerbaijan", the document says.

"After the previous presidential elections in 2013, the rights of citizens were severely limited, pressure on political opponents, independent media and NGOs and civil society institutions intensified. The last list of political prisoners includes 142 names," the document says.

"The criminal case started in 2014 against independent NGOs and international organizations cooperating with them, the criminal case is still ongoing. Moreover, in this case, and in 2017, arrests were made. The activities of foreign donors (Western) are actually stopped," the statement said. The parliamentary majority has a de facto majority of votes in election commissions. According to the CEC, the number of voters is 5 192 063 voters. "However, this figure differs from the data of State Stastistical Committee, which claims that there are 7.1 million residents in the country at the age of 18," the report says.

"Before the election, a number of media resources were blocked. Freedom of the press is assessed as local and international as critical. In the context of continuing pressure on opposition media structures, journalists, bloggers, social networking activists, the role of the media and its impact on public opinion have significantly weakened," the report says.

At the same time, experts criticized the interim report of the OSCE ODIHR on March 30. "Despite the fact that a number of problems were reflected in this report, as a whole, the document expressed a restrained assessment that was inadequate to the real situation, which caused criticism of the local community. This is despite the fact that the ODIHR sharply criticized the 2013 elections, and after that the electoral environment was only abandoned," the report says.

"Consecutive holding of elections in this form, ignoring the recommendations of the OSCE and other authoritative international and local organizations led to the fact that, as a part of the democratic process, the people lost their role in the formation of their own power by peaceful means and the elections lost their significance," the authors note.

The document was signed by: Akif Gurbanov, Annagi Hajibeyli, Alesker Mammadli, Khalid Agaliyev, Khalid Bagirov, Khadija Ismayilova, Intigam Aliyev, Gubad Ibadoglu, Mehman Aliyev, Rasul Jafarov, Rovshan Hajibeyli, Samir Kazymly, Shahvaled Chobanoglu and Yalchin Imanov. -03B06-