Baku; Monitoring Desk – Azerbaijan held municipal elections for 1,606 municipalities on 23 Dec 2019 in which More than 4.9 million voters are eligible to cast their vote. 15,156 members will be elected to run the affairs of these municipalities. 5,049 poling stations were set up countrywide and the poling started at 08:00 and end at 19:00.
News.Az reported that President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, first lady Mehriban Aliyeva and their daughter Leyla Aliyeva arrived at the polling station No 6 of Sabayil constituency No 29 located at secondary school No 6.President Ilham Aliyev entered the voting booth and cast his ballot.Then first lady Mehriban Aliyeva and Leyla Aliyeva cast their votes.
According to the Election Commission of Azerbaijan 13 political parties participated in the municipal elections. One third of total candidates come from political parties that is considered a very good indicator because mostly the local government elections are supposed to be non party elections.
Chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Mazahir Panahov said that the number of candidates is 41,462.Chairman was addressing to a press conference on Dec. 22.
Xinua reports that 52,636 local and 17 international observers monitored the elections. Webcams are also installed at 1,000 polling stations in an effort to ensure voting transparency.
Trend reported that Azerbaijani Minister of Transport, Communications and High Technologies Ramin Guluzade and Chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Mazahir Panahov inspected the webcam technical control system in the administrative building of CEC for the municipal election.
Ramin Guluzade and Mazahir Panahov also made recommendations regarding the transparent holding of the elections, in accordance with the electoral law.In order to process free, fair and transparent holding of municipal elections, all necessary steps have been taken.
The experience of using webcams has been successfully used in Azerbaijan for 11 years already. This allows everyone to directly observe the voting process.
On election day, by visiting the CEC official website, everyone was able to observe the voting process, vote counting without registration.
The last municipal elections were held in the country on December 23, 2014.
