Azerbaijan's President Claims Victory in Election

MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) – Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's supporters claimed victory in an election Wednesday that was all but expected to overwhelmingly cement his grip on power in the oil-rich former Soviet nation.
The head of Aliyev's election campaign headquarters declared shortly after voting ended that the incumbent had secured a new term.
"We can express this thought, that Ilham Aliyev has been chosen as the president of Azerbaijan for the coming five years," Ali Ahmedov said.
Aliyev, 51, who succeeded his father as leader of Azerbaijan in 2003, has presided over a hydrocarbon boom that has financed the transformation of the capital, Baku, and underwritten an almost tenfold increase in the size of the Caspian Sea nation’s economy over the last decade.
While Azerbaijan has enjoyed growing prosperity, government critics say that full-fledged political freedoms remain a distant prospect and harassment of the opposition is widespread.
The leading opposition candidate, prominent academic Camil Hasanli, was not expected to receive more than a single-digit percentage share of the vote. Several exit polls, whose reliability was not immdiately clear, showed Aliyev winning with more than 80 percent of the votes shortly after polling closed.
Local political activist Adnan Hajizada wrote on his Twitter account that he saw supporters of Aliyev's ruling New Azerbaijan Party waving flags and celebrating in downtown Baku.
Haslani’s campaign headquarters said in a statement Wednesday that the elections had been marred by numerous cases of voting fraud, including attempts to expel election observers from polling stations, ballot-stuffing and multiple voting by individuals.
Earlier in the day, a mobile app developed by Azerbaijan’s election authorities, designed to allow a monitoring of the election process, apparently released final polling data that showed Aliyev receiving 72.76 percent of the vote. Officials said that it was a technical glitch.
Three hours before the close of voting, the Central Election Commission said that the turnout had reached 58 percent, according to an online statement. Just over 5 million people in majority Muslim Azerbaijan are eligible to vote.
Aliyev, who has barely participated in the election campaign and has declined to appear in televised debates with the other nine candidates, cast his vote Wednesday morning in the Baku school where he studied.
No election in Azerbaijan, which is sandwiched between Iran and Russia, has ever been deemed free and fair by observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
A preliminary report on the election from the OSCE is scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
Concerns were also raised in the run-up to this election.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton warned about “continued pressure on a number of opposition activists, civil society and independent media,” in a statement last week. On Tuesday, Amnesty International said Azerbaijani authorities were engaged in a “downward spiral of oppression.”
Nestled above Iran’s northern border, Azerbaijan is the only European gateway to the rich hydrocarbon resources of the Caspian that is not under Russian control. Critics have suggested that its geopolitical importance for Europe and the United States has shielded it from more intense Western criticism.
The Aliyev dynasty has been at the center of Azerbaijani government for almost four decades. A favorable vote in a 2009 referendum to change the constitution paved the way for Ilham Aliyev to stand for a third term. Heads of state in the former Soviet republic were previously limited to only two terms in office.