NIDA Movement Refuses to Participate in Parliamentary Elections

The movement NIDA stated refusal from further participation in the parliamentary elections of November 1st. The organization withdrew its candidates.

In a statement issued on October 27 NIDA points to the lack of "faith in the conduct of free and fair elections." The organization is convinced that "the elections will be rigged again and the power will form a parliament serving it.

"Having taken the decision to participate in the elections, we did not pursue the goal of getting seats. We wanted to use the 21-day period of campaigning to strengthen contacts with the population, familiarize voters with the NIDA, bring to the citizens our goals and programs, listen to concerns of people, encourage them to fight for change. During the period of the collection of signatures of voters and election campaign we communicated with tens of thousands of people and achieved this goal," the document says.

On the other hand, the behavior of the authorities during the election campaign showed their willingness to hold elections on their traditional script.

Thus, of the 8 candidates nominated by NIDA only two were recorded - Ramin Huseynov on the 18th Nizami-Nasimi Constituency and Ilaha Amiraslanova on the 35th Khatai Third Constituency. Other six candidates on trumped-up pretexts were not registered. In some cases, voters were pressured to force them to renounce their signatures in favor of candidates from NIDA. Similar cases were with other opposition and independent candidates. In addition, in order to reduce even greater interest in the electoral process the candidates have been refused to provide free airtime for campaigning on public television.

According to the NIDA statement, "the authorities are afraid of objective and fair assessment of elections by authoritative international organizations" and therefore create obstacles to oversee the process by the OSCE ODIHR.

At the same time NIDA does not trust the objectivity of the PACE delegation, which, in the opinion of the authors of the statement showed its partiality during its previous visit.

"Given the current socio-political situation and repressive environment, we refuse to participate in the parliamentary elections and declare that we do not recognize the vote with known results. Along with that, our activists will monitor the elections and try to expose election fraud," NIDA stated in conclusion. -06D--