Azerbaijan’s ruling party, New Azerbaijan, has won the country’s parliamentary elections that were boycotted by the main opposition parties, the electoral commission said.
The New Azerbaijan party had won at least 70 seats in the 125-seat parliament, the commission said.
A host of small parties and candidates loyal to President Ilham Aliyev took almost all the rest.
The opposition has accused the government of jailing its opponents.
International monitors from the OSCE did not observe the vote, citing government restrictions.
Photo AP
More than a dozen political parties were vying for 125 seats in Azerbaijan’s National Assembly.
However, analysts say those that could be considered genuine in their opposition to the government refused to participate.
“The pre-election period was marred by massive violations. That’s why we decided not to participate,” opposition Musavat Party leader Arif Gajily told Reuters news agency.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the leading international monitoring group, has not considered any of Azerbaijan’s elections since independence to be free and fair.
In 2015 – for the first time in more than two decades – the OSCE chose not to send a mission, condemning the Azerbaijani government’s “crackdown on independent and critical voices”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called Azerbaijan’s failure to award any points to Russia’s entry in this year’s Eurovision song contest as “outrageous”.
Sergei Lavrov said the points had been “stolen” from Russia’s Dina Garipova and “this outrageous action will not remain without a response”.
Azerbaijan says it cannot explain how it awarded no points to Russia, when Dina Garipova came second in its phone poll.
Russian voters awarded the maximum 12 points to Azerbaijan’s Farid Mammadov.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has ordered an inquiry into how its votes for Russia apparently went missing.
And the country’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, sitting next to Sergei Lavrov at a press conference in Moscow, called it a “detective story”.
Elmar Mammadyarov said records from all three of Azerbaijan’s mobile phone operators show that Azeris awarded Ukraine’s entry the most votes, followed by Russia’s.
Azerbaijan says it cannot explain how it awarded no points to Russia, when Dina Garipova came second in its phone poll
“Where did the votes go? How did they disappear? This, of course, is a question for our public television,” he said.
Sergei Lavrov said he and his counterpart had agreed they should take a “unified course of action” once the reasons for the discrepancy became clear.
A spokesman for the European Broadcasting Union, which runs the Eurovision Song Contest, said the phone vote was not definitive. A national jury in each country also contributes 50% of the final decision, the Associated Press reports.
Despite the high-level political interest, 10 points for second place from Azerbaijan would not have made any difference to Dina Garipova’s fifth place, since she finished 17 points behind Norway.
Azerbaijan, which hosted last year’s contest, has traditionally tried to maintain good relations with Moscow though there have been tensions over energy in the past.
Meanwhile, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has weighed in with his own accusations. Suspicious that the Belarusian singer did not receive a single point from Russia, he has claimed that the final was falsified.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has ordered an inquiry into why his country gave Russia “nul points” at Eurovision Song Contest 2013.
Voters and the official Azerbaijan jury in fact gave strong backing to the Russian entry, according to officials.
Azerbaijan’s state broadcaster suggested there may have been voting violations.
Russia gave the maximum 12 points to Azerbaijan’s entry – a ballad by Farid Mammadov.
Farid Mammadov came second behind winner Emmelie de Forest from Denmark.
Russia’s Dina Garipova came fifth at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in the Swedish city of Malmo
Russia’s Dina Garipova came fifth at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in the Swedish city of Malmo.
Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Russia, Polad Bulbuloglu, disclosed that President Ilham Aliyev had ordered an investigation and votes were being recounted.
He said that a large number of voters in Azerbaijan, submitting votes by text message, had supported the Russian Federation.
“According to this data, Russia should have received 10 points from Azerbaijan. An announcement will be made about this tonight on Azeri Public Television.”
Camil Guliyev, head of the country’s state broadcaster, said the failure to give Russia any points was of serious concern.
“We sincerely hope that this incident, possibly initiated by certain interest groups, will not cast a shadow over the brotherly relations of the Russian and Azerbaijani peoples,” he said, without elaborating.
Azerbaijan, which hosted last year’s contest, has traditionally tried to maintain good relations with Moscow though there have been tensions over energy in the past.
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