Pre-election Campaign Begins in Parliamentary Elections

Baku / 17.01.20 / Turan: Azerbaijan launched the pre-election campaign stage in the February 9 early parliamentary elections.

According to the latest data from the CEC, the fight for 125 seats in the parliament will be led by 1,623 candidates. This is a record number in the history of parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan.

Among the parties, the ruling New Azerbaijan has the most candidates - 123.

From the Musavat party 63 candidates were registered in 59 districts (in 4 districts the party has two candidates each).

According to Gulaga Aslanli, the head of the Musavat apparatus, the party initially had candidates in more than 80 constituencies. However, due to artificial obstacles and pressure, some of the Musavatists were not registered. In his opinion, this was done deliberately so that the party could not get free airtime for campaigning on Public Television.

  The Union of REAL Republicans - a block of the REAL party and non-partisan candidates has 31 registered candidates. At the same time, the leader of the REAL party, Ilgar Mammadov, and two members of the organization, Rasul Jafarov and Zaur Gurbanli, were denied to participate in the elections on the pretext of a criminal record, although the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe urged Baku to execute the decisions of the Strasbourg court and remove their criminal record.

At the Electoral Bloc Movement, of 18 candidates, 16 were registered.

Thus, only the ruling New Azerbaijan Party received the right to campaign for free. Such cases were in the past and then the NAP refused to use this right.

A source in the party told Turan a decision will be made today to use free campaigning or to abandon it.

The election campaign will end at 8:00 on February 8, one day before the vote.    —06D-