Azerbaijan leader re-elected, OSCE criticizes vote (AP)
By MATT SIEGEL, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago
BAKU, Azerbaijan - The president of oil-rich Azerbaijan won re-election by a landslide in a vote boycotted by opposition parties, and OSCE monitors said Thursday the ballot failed to meet international standards.
With 70 percent of precincts counted, President Ilham Aliyev won 89 percent of Wednesday's vote, Central Election Commission chief Mazahir Panahov said Thursday.
Aliyev, who has led the Caspian nation of 8 million people since 2003, faced six opponents in Wednesday's vote, none of whom was considered a true challenger. Still, government officials hailed the vote as the most democratic ever in Azerbaijan's post-Soviet history.
But the country's top five opposition parties boycotted the vote, saying they were not allowed to campaign freely and pointing to the government's history of closing independent media and imprisoning opposition figures.
The vote marked "significant progress, but didn't meet all commitments," Boris Frlec, head of the 440-member election monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other groups, said at a news conference.
In a statement, monitors said the vote lacked "robust competition and vibrant political discourse facilitated by the media, and thus did not reflect all principles of a meaningful and pluralistic democratic election."
In Washington, the State Department said it the vote had shown improvement from previous elections but stressed it did not fully meet international standards.
"We congratulate the Azerbaijani people on having this election and instituting some improvements in the way this election occurred over previous elections," spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. "It was an improvement; there's still work to be done."
Russia and the U.S. both have been vying for influence in Azerbaijan, one of the world's leading energy exporters that sits on a key transport route for Caspian and Central Asian energy resources.
Without waiting for full official results or the OSCE's assessment, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called Aliyev on Thursday to congratulate him on a "confident" victory.
Russia has often bickered with the OSCE over its election assessments.
The presidential election was Azerbaijan's fifth since the 1991 Soviet collapse, but many describe the country as being closer to a monarchy than a democracy. Aliyev is the son of Geidar Aliyev, who ruled Azerbaijan first as the Communist Party boss during the Soviet times, then as president in 1993-2003.
"These elections were not conducted freely, transparently or honestly, and did not meet international standards," opposition leader Isa Qambar told reporters in Baku.
Most of Azerbaijan's crude is sent to the Mediterranean through pipelines crossing Georgia, and the West hopes to persuade Azerbaijan to skirt Russia also in sending its natural gas to Europe.
Russia, in turn, has offered to buy Azerbaijan's gas and ship it via its territory, and talks are ongoing.
