Voting in Azerbaijan ends with low voter turnout

The voting at municipal elections in Azerbaijan is over; the voter turnout was 38.93 percent. No complaints were reported in the process, the Central Election Commission (CEC) has reported.

Residents of Azerbaijan were electing 15,035 members of 1607 municipal councils. The number of members of each council varies from 5 to 19, depending on the population of the municipality. In total, 37,077 candidates were registered; and 5015 polling stations were opened in 118 constituencies.

According to Rufat Gyulmamedov, the director of the CEC's Information Centre, the voter turnout at municipal elections was 38.93 percent; thus, the total voting electorate made 1,876,014 people, the "Vzglyad.az" reports.

The telephone hotline of the Press Council of Azerbaijan has received no appeals from the media, which were covering the elections. The members of the Monitoring Group of the Council, who monitored the voting process at various polling stations, have not registered any obstacles to the media in performing their activities, the "Trend" reports.

Experts and members of opposition political parties claimed that the election campaign for the local elections passed in the atmosphere of absence of interest to them from the society.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.