Epress.am News from Armenia
The CEC report says that both polling stations and election constituencies have been supplied with necessary equipment and are ready for the election day, reports APA news agency.
The report says that 738 candidates were registered in Azerbaijan’s Nov. 7 parliamentary elections. The candidacy of 302 persons were not registered because of serious irregularities in the documents, incorrect information about the sources of income, property, faults in the signature sheets that were not eliminated despite the warnings. Out of the registered candidates, 53 withdrew their candidacies, and finally the names of 688 persons were included into the ballot papers — 94 of the candidates are women.
CEC received 239 appeals in October, 172 of which were connected with the registration of candidates. In 4 cases, the appellant withdrew his appeal. The rest, 168 appeals, were considered: 131 of them were not changed as they were the decisions of the relevant election constituencies. In 35 cases, the appeals were granted and as a result, 35 were registered at the CEC.
In one case the registration of the candidate was cancelled, and in one case the appeal by a candidate for canceling the registration of another candidate was rejected. CEC was commissioned to reconsider 5 appeals basing on the decision of Baku Appeals Court and 2 appeals basing on the decision of the Supreme Court: 7 of the appeals were solved in favor of the candidates. In 49 cases, the appeals were rejected; in 11 cases, the appeals were dropped as the subject of discussion was solved; in 6 cases, the appeals were returned; and in one case the decision on withdrawing the candidacy was cancelled and the citizen’s candidacy was restored.
Sixty-three media organizations (38 newspapers, 13 news agencies, 12 TV and radio), which offered paid air time for election campaigning informed the Central Election Commission about the payment. More than 5,000 boards were installed for the candidates’ campaign materials. According to the Electoral Code, local executive officials allocated 4,930 venues (2,676 open, 2,254 closed) in 3,440 residential areas for candidates’ meetings with voters.
In total, 46,569 local observers were registered for the parliamentary elections: 1,705 were registered at the CEC and 102 of them are from the political parties, 560 from NGOs, three – on the initiative of the registered candidates and others – on personal initiatives. Of the local observers, 43,153 were accredited at the electoral district commissions to observe voting process in certain constituencies; 8,177 represent political parties, 5,372 NGOs and 29,604 will observe the elections on their own initiative.
Accredited at the CEC are 1,026 observers from 19 international (foreign) organizations, including PACE, Council of European Union, EU representation in Baku, European Parliament, TurkPA, OSCE PA, OSCE/ODIHR, CIS, GUAM, embassies of the US, UK, Kazakhstan, Norway, Bulgaria, Poland, Japan and Belgium, as well as European Election Monitoring Academy.
There are citizens of 48 countries among the international observers. 43 foreign journalists from nearly 20 foreign media organizations, including Reuters, BBC, Al-Jazeera, TRT, Associated Press, France Press, EPA, Anatolian news agency, Ihlas news agency (IHA), Dogan news agency (DHA), Daily Ettehad were also accredited at CEC.
Five hundred polling stations were equipped with web-cameras for online watching the voting process via Internet. According to the Electoral Code, ELS Independent Research Center was registered at CEC for conducting exit-poll on the voting day.
CEC states that information about the voters’ turnout will be delivered five times and voting results few hours later ending of the voting process to CEC and its website via Automated Information System network.