NY Times: Observers Differ on Fairness of Election in Azerbaijan

by New-York Times, DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

A prominent delegation of international election observers on Thursday sharply criticized Azerbaijan’s presidential election as unfair and rife with fraud, amid aggressive efforts by the Azerbaijani government and its allies to portray the vote as legitimate.

According to official returns, President Ilham Aliyev overwhelmingly won a third five-year term in Wednesday’s election, securing 84.6 percent of the vote with nearly all the counting completed. The best established of nine opposition candidates, Jamil Hasanli, won 5.5 percent.

Mr. Hasanli’s campaign, however, alleged that there had been election violations throughout the country, and observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said they had also documented widespread irregularities, including ballot-box stuffing and what appeared to be fraudulent counting.

The observers also said the election was deeply unfair from the start, tilted to Mr. Aliyev’s advantage because of his domination of state-controlled news media and his use of official efforts to suppress the opposition.

The election was “undermined by limitations on the freedoms of expression, assembly and association that did not guarantee a level playing field for candidates,” the observers wrote in a report that was released at a news conference here on Thursday afternoon.

“Continued allegations of candidate and voter intimidation and a restrictive media environment marred the campaign,” the report said. “Significant problems were observed throughout all stages of Election Day processes and underscored the serious nature of the shortcomings.”

But observers from other delegations, including a group of former members of the United States House of Representatives, said the voting on Wednesday was clean and efficient. Mr. Aliyev, thanking voters in a televised statement, called the elections “free and transparent.”

Former Representative Michael E. McMahon, a Democrat from Staten Island, called the vote “honest, fair and really efficient.”

“There were much shorter lines than in America, and no hanging chads” — a reference to the disputed ballots in the United States presidential race in 2000.

However, the O.S.C.E., which monitors balloting all over the world, said some of the fraud in Azerbaijan was blatant.

“Observers reported clear indications of ballot-box stuffing in 37 polling stations, bypassing critical measures to ensure accountability and deter potential fraud,” the group said. “The counting was assessed in overwhelmingly negative terms, with 58 percent of observed polling stations assessed as bad or very bad, indicating serious problems.”

The group also cited “manipulation of voter list entries, results or protocols, including cases of votes being reassigned to a different candidate.”

Observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, which often issues assessments in conjunction with the O.S.C.E., drew sharply different conclusions in Azerbaijan.

“Over all around Election Day we have observed a free, fair and transparent electoral process,” the Parliamentary Assembly delegation reported. “From what we have seen, electoral procedures on the eve and on Election Day have been carried out in a professional and peaceful way.”

The split in assessments seemed to reflect an aggressive lobbying effort by the Aliyev government to portray the election as fair. That effort was fully on display at the news conference held by O.S.C.E. observers, where journalists from government-controlled news outlets jumped up and fiercely denounced the negative findings, loudly applauded one another, shouted down the official speakers and largely prevented other questions from being asked.