Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has officially won re-election with 92.12% of the vote, the country’s Central Election Commission announced on Friday.
But election observers have expressed concerns about the results. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe announced Thursday that the election was held in a restrictive environment without real political competition.
Aliyev has been in power for more than 20 years. His call for early voting comes as his approval ratings soar after he swiftly retaken the Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists who had ruled it for 30 years. He is currently serving another seven-year term.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev re-elected in landslide
Artur Gerasimov, special coordinator and leader of the OSCE election observation mission in Azerbaijan, said Wednesday’s elections were “held in a restrictive environment and…critical voices were suppressed.”
Gerasimov said on Thursday that Aliyev “did not face a meaningful challenge” and that the contest “lacked real pluralism” due to restrictions on independent media, civil society and other political parties. . He added that the “almost non-existence of analytical reporting” in Azerbaijani media hinders voters’ ability to make informed choices.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev leaves a polling station in Khankendi, Azerbaijan, on February 7, 2024. (Azerbaijan Presidential Press Office, via Associated Press)
Analysts have suggested that Mr. Aliyev may have brought the election forward to take advantage of a surge in popularity after September’s Karabakh attack. He will be back in the spotlight in November when Azerbaijan, which relies heavily on fossil fuel revenues, hosts the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Aliyev, 62, has been in power since 2003, succeeding his father, who was Azerbaijan’s communist boss and then president for a decade when the country gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. is employed in
Aliyev declared that he wanted the elections to be the “beginning of a new era” in which Azerbaijan would gain complete control of its territory. He and his family voted in Khankendi, a city called Stepanakert by Armenians at the time, where the self-proclaimed separatist government was headquartered.
The region, known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh, and large areas around it, came under full control of Armenian-backed ethnic Armenian forces at the end of the separatist war in 1994.
Azerbaijan regained parts of Karabakh and much of the surrounding territory in 2020 in a six-week war that ended with a Moscow-brokered ceasefire. In December 2022, Azerbaijan began blocking roads connecting the region with Armenia, causing food and fuel shortages. It then launched an air raid in September 2023, routing the separatists in just one day and forcing them to lay down their weapons.
More than 100,000 Armenians were evacuated from the area, leaving it nearly deserted.
Mr. Aliyev’s period in power, including in the run-up to presidential elections, was marked by the introduction of increasingly strict laws to suppress political debate and arrests of opposition figures and independent journalists.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Azerbaijan’s two main opposition parties, the Mussabat Party and the Azerbaijan Popular Front, did not take part in the vote, and some opposition members claimed that the vote may have been rigged.
