"U.S. State Department's biased statement on parliamentary elections is pressure on Azerbaijan"

The U.S. State Department's biased and prejudiced statement about the parliamentary elections can be considered as pressure on Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani Association for Civil Society Development (ACSDA) Electoral Chief of Staff Maharram Zulfugarli said at a press-conference.

He said that despite the U.S. State Department has prepared its report, referring to the views of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the OSCE PA, PACE and European Parliament Observation Mission, the State Department's position differs from the position set forth in the opinion of the above-mentioned organizations.

Azerbaijan held the parliamentary elections Nov. 7. The voter turnout hit about 50.14% (roughly 2.48 million voters) in Azerbaijan, the Central Election Commission (CEC) reported.

The CEC reported that 690 candidates were running for the parliamentary elections.

Parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan are held by the majority system in 125 constituencies. Previous parliamentary elections were held in November 2005.

During parliamentary elections ACSDA observed 4,400 polling stations in 106 constituencies.

"We think that the U.S. Department's this position can provoke falsification in the reports about parliamentary elections prepared by four authoritative international organizations, as well as implement the scenario to destabilize the situation and organize riots in Azerbaijan, which had been already tested in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine", Zulfugarli said.

The U.S. State Department's report said that some technical issues of the elections, including centralized registration and a large number of internal observers, stressed improvement in the electoral process and a slight increase in the percentage of female candidates. However there were serious problems during the electoral process and election day. It is the lack of balance in media coverage of the various candidates, restrictions on basic freedoms - of assembly and expression, as well as violation of the registration of candidates.


/Trend/