Azerbaijan: participants of elections report no complaints on "Day of Silence"

Today, on the eve of parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, no serious violations of electoral legislation has been fixed.

"Today, no serious violations of the law have been registered. As required by law, at the polling stations, all the official campaign stands with posters of candidates were removed. In printed media, I also didn't fix any campaigning. Television at all was outside the election campaign," Natig Jafarli, the executive secretary of the movement "Republican Alternative" (ReAl), who runs for an MP at the 12^th Garadag-Binagadi-Yasamal constituency of Baku, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

However, he noted that in some places posters of candidates are still present in windows of shops and service facilities. "Agitation was also present on the Internet, not only in favour, but also against candidates. But we didn't fix any blatant violations, like mass meetings with voters or the use of administrative resources. There were no problems with the 'Day of Silence'. The problem lies in another aspect – the whole campaign was held in the atmosphere of 'silence'. The authorities have done everything to ensure that the campaign has not led to any increase of citizens' political activeness. A special role in this was played by the removal of the election topic from TV channels," said Jafarli.

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