The election campaign is taking place on the background of illegal interference by authorities

The legal and political atmosphere in the country do not create conditions for an effective campaign, said Anar Mammadov at the press conference Election Monitoring and Democratic Studies Center (EMDS.) He presented the second interim report jointly with the Public Association for International Cooperation of Volunteers (PAICV.) The report covered the campaign period from September 16 to October 6. Mammadov noted that the amendments to the election campaign in 2008 and 2010 led to a reduction of the campaign by up to 60 days, and agitation to 22 days, which limited participation of candidates, parties and observers in the electoral process.

During the election campaign, editor Hilal Mamedov, of the newspaper "Tolyshi sado", was sentenced and journalist Parviz Hashimli, was arrested. The campaign was characterized by the use of social networks to disseminate information about the elections, but the activists of social media were subject to pressure.  The campaign is held under an unequal situation. Thus, in many districts the candidates were provided with unfavorable venues for meeting.

However, local authorities, police, municipalities intervened the campaign activities of opposition candidates. In 34% of districts were noted the forced participation of citizens in activities to support President Ilham Aliyev. Despite technical improvements, there are problems in the lists of voters. There were some cases where dead people were included in the lists; people of internal emigration, and those who did not vote in the previous election were excluded from the lists. 

CEC showed discrimination of bodies seeking to exit polls. There are problems with the registration of independent observers. Thus, 100 observers trained by EMDS were not granted accreditation, although the CEC announces registration of 40,000 observers. However, most of these observers are representatives of local authorities and government agencies.

Doubts cause the identity of 2,000 international observers, as only 400 of them have been presented by serious international organizations: ODIHR , the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly , the European Parliament PACE .

Mamedov also pointed out that the real active campaign was carried out in favor of Ilham Aliyev, Jamil Hasanli, and Iqbal Aghazadeh . The majority of the other candidates were "technical", and actually agitated in favor of the candidate of power.

The content and time of the debates on public television did not meet the requirements of the voters. Of 24 common, national and regional channels, only ITV gave airtime to candidates. At the same time, ITV refused to give Jamil Hasanli paid airtime. CEC has shown bias, passing a stern warning for Jamil Hasanli for the incident at the debate, and just a warning for Hafiz Hajiyev.

In general, according to Mamedov, the political and legal climate in the country raises serious doubts that the vote on October 9 will be free, fair and democratic.  According to the head of the EMDC, Elnur Mammadov, on the voting day, observers will monitor the coalition on 15% of polling stations in all regions.

These NGOs recommend the need to create conditions for the smooth updating voter lists, to eliminate the pressure on voters , observers and representatives of candidates. The authorities should not interfere in the work of election commissions. -06B-