Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDSC): elections were not free and unfair

Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDSC)  held a press conference on the results of the presidential election. The Executive Director of the structure, Suleymanli Bashir,  told about short-term and long-term election observation. There were volunteers and  trainers, but in Gabala, Sheki, Guba no opposrtunities were givent to  hold trainings; 150 trained observers were barred from monitoring.

The Head of the Center, Anar Mammadov, spoke  about violations during the campaign of candidates, the voting period, the registration of candidates. According to him, equality and jsutive were not provided  at any stage of the election. In comparison with the parliamentary elections in 2010 , the current violation were more serious. Observations in the 769 polling stations (15 % of all sites) showed that 19% of voters  were not announced the number of voters.

In 17% of the polling stations  thhere were not information about the number of ballots, in the 26% - were not announced the voting results, in 44 % the secrecy of voting was violated, in  about 39 %  there was a  propaganda in favor of the candidates.

Mammadov said that  in 141 polling  stations protocols  were  processed incorrectly. On 8 % of the polling stations  the vote count was  not transparent, in  205 - were not posted the final results,  38 cases of "carousel"  were reported.

Mammadov doubt that the activity was about 70 %. He called this figure "fantastic." Mammadov said that the figures in the future will create serious problems for the CEC. He recalled that the year  2013 was marked by the largest voter activity, which did not exceed 60%. In this election the voter activity  did not exceed 50%, he said.

The Centre  gave a conclusion that the current presidential elections were not free, were unfair and nondemocratic. -05C04-