Azerbaijani opposition challenges voter turnout at referendum

Ali Akhmedov, executive secretary of the party in power "New Azerbaijan", has stated that the high voter turnout at the referendum on amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan is an evidence of people's support of the amendments.

We remind you that according to preliminary data as of 7:00 p.m. local time a total of 3,478,570 voters appeared at the polling stations, which makes 71.08 percent of all entitled to vote.

The opposition challenges these data. According to Isa Gambar, leader of the "Musavat" Party, the voting was accompanied by mass falsifications, and in a reality the turnout made less than 15 percent.

The citizens of Azerbaijan have expressed their attitude to 41 amendments in 29 Articles of the country's Constitution. Each amendment was voted separately. Those amendments, supported by more than 50 percent of the voters, will be considered adopted.

According to preliminary data of exit polls, conducted by the "ELS" Centre of Independent Researches together with the Association for Promoting Civil Society in Azerbaijan, at 800 polling stations of 118 constituencies the voting turnout made 69.7 percent. The 29 points included into the ballot paper were supported by essentially more than 50 percent of the polled voters.

Natik Mamedov, Secretary of the Central Election Commission (CEC) has noted that no complaints arrived to him during the day, and six calls were made to the telephone hotline of the CEC; all of them were purely informative.

However, as Arif Gadzhily, representative of the Agitation Croup "Republicans", said earlier to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, the referendum is held under mass violations of the law. According to his story, the "the most violent falsifications" are the so-called "roundabouts", when at many polling stations one voter could get 3-4 ballot papers.

Besides, at a number of polling stations the ballot papers were tabulated well before the start of voting without participation of observers. Another typical violation was non-admittance of observers to the polling stations or removal of them out after a short-term stay at the stations.

Observers have noted that propaganda materials of pro-power Agitation Groups were preserved near the stations, besides, from the morning, facts of mass throw-in of packs of ballot papers into the boxes were registered.

In his turn, Michel Voisant, deputy head of the French delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly (PA) of the OSCE, has noted that the referendum was constructive: "The organization of the referendum is nice, the voting process is constructive; we visited a polling station located some 30 kilometres off Baku, and I spoke to other observers, who told me that everything was OK."