On 9 February, parliamentary elections were held in Azerbaijan. According to the preliminary results, the ruling New Azerbaijan Party (NAP) won 69 seats, out of 125, in the new legislature, which were 4 more than in the previous legislature. The only opposition candidate expected to make it into the next parliament is Erkin Gadirli of the Republican Alternative Civic Movement (REAL). 

The Central Election Commission of Azerbaijan (CEC) put the turnout at 47.81%, nearly eight percentage points less than in the previous parliamentary elections.

Some 1,314 candidates were registered within the early parliamentary elections. The candidacies of 246 people were nominated by 19 political parties, 1,057 were self-nominated, 11 by initiative groups. 

Women accounted for 21% of all candidates while 79% are male candidates. As many as 5,426 permanent polling stations operated in 125 constituencies of the country. Some 883 international observers and 77,790 local observers were monitoring the voting process. Among the local observers, 35,152 were representatives of political parties. International observers represented 58 countries and 59 organizations. 

The CEC Chairman Mazahir Panahov said at the final press conference that serious signals of violations were received from 7 constituencies, and all of them will be seriously investigated. According to Panahov, constituencies number 33, 35, 60, 74, 79, 80 and 81 would be investigated. 

The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) made a joint statement on the regularity of elections in the country. “The restrictive legislation and political environment prevented genuine competition in Azerbaijan’s early parliamentary elections. Although some prospective candidates were denied the right to stand, candidate registration was otherwise inclusive. Despite the large number of candidates, voters were not provided with a meaningful choice, due to a lack of real political discussion,“ read the statement. 

“Despite some appearance of progress in the preparation for the elections, the widespread violations of counting procedures raised serious concerns about the results of the voting in general,” said Frank Schwabe, Head of the PACE delegation. “In contradiction to the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights and repeated requests from the Council of Europe in the cases of Ilgar Mammadov and others, a number of potential candidates were prevented from running.”

The observers further noted that the election administration was well resourced and met legal deadlines, and the CEC made concerted efforts to act transparently and was welcoming towards international observers. The efforts made to assure the participation of IDPs (from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding occupied regions) in the elections were praised by the observers. However, significant procedural violations during the counting and tabulation of votes on election day raised concerns over whether the results were established honestly, the observers said.