Election Monitoring Centre scarifies amendments to Azerbaijani Electoral Code

In their essence, the amendment in the Electoral Code, recently approved by the Parliament of Azerbaijan, create no legal guarantees for eliminating the main problems on the road towards free and fair elections. This conclusion was made by the experts of the Election Monitoring Centre (EMC) - an NGO with 6-years experience of election monitoring and a member of the ENEMO (European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations in close cooperation with the OSCE).

Anar Mamedli, head of the EMC, has stated that the June 2 Law on Amendments and Additions to the Electoral Code of Azerbaijan has failed to account most of the important recommendations of local and international organizations on improving the electoral legislation.

In particular, the EMC is expressing its concern with the fact that no changes have been still made to the electoral legislation of Azerbaijan on the basis of the guidelines of the OSCE and Council of Europe's observation missions after the previous elections. Namely, the legislators have disregarded the proposal on forming electoral commissions on new principles, which guarantee their independence. Besides, the recommendations on increasing the transparency of elections, simplification of elective procedures and perfection of complaint consideration mechanisms were also ignored.

Thus, the EMC has welcomed the presence in the amendments of certain norms, which are positively telling on the elections, however, the Centre ascertains that these norms, in the final end, are not able to render any essential influence on possibility to hold democratic elections in the country.