About Elections in Azerbaijan and 'Aliyev's Fang'

Andrei Buzin PhD in Law, expert in electoral law. From 1993 to 2001 he served as the advisory member of election commissions at all six levels. Since 1999–Chairman of the Inter-regional civic association of voters. Since 2013 – the co-chairman of movement 'Golos' board.

Andrei Buzin, who observed Parliamentary Election in Azerbaijan visiting polling stations in Baku on November 11 this year, shared his impressions on the Election Day processes.

Two years ago Azerbaijan elected Aliyev and this year the Parliamentary Elections – Elections to  Milli Mejlis – were held in Azerbaijan. By the way the Election of Aliyev as well as before, left an ambiguous impression: on the one hand, there is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of the population came to vote for the 'father of the nation' or the candidates supported by him, on the other hand, the question remains whether these elections were free (at least under the Europeans standards).

My personal impression of the Elections in Azerbaijan, of course, cannot be taken into account for exhaustive evaluation. I was there only three days, including the Election Day, and respectively I have visited ten polling stations in central Baku, including the observation of vote count at one of them. I was not aware of electoral processes outside Baku, therefore I tried to reconstruct the situation using the official electoral statistics.

Moreover my personal impressions contradicted the results of analysis of official statistics.

Chart No. 1. Distribution of PECs based on turnout

Chart 1. The blue line - Distribution of PECs by turnout in Elections to Milli Mejlis, 1 November 2015. The orange line - Distribution of PECs by turnout in Presidential Elections of Aliyev, 9 October 2013

I have read the Electoral Code of Azerbaijan Republic (the procedural provisions are actually very similar to ours). At most polling stations which I have visited, there was no information about the candidates disrespecting the legal requirements, but there were redundant portraits of the former and incumbent Presidents. We have noticed no crowds of voters. Even more I was astonished by the vote count process. At a polling station I have visited (it is located in the city center of Baku and lots of observers were present there) almost all procedures provisioned by law were breached. It was almost impossible to crosscheck the calculations. As the apotheosis of all this: the next day I discovered that the data in official protocol significantly diverges from the results, which were handed over to me (see Table No. 1)! I would like to emphasize that when the calculation was completed, the chairman of the commission proudly announced: 'Now do not disturb me, I am going to my office to prepare the protocol'.

Table No.1. Results of voting at the polling station, which I have visited

However it seems that among all the observers I was the only one to notice the violations. Even PACE, not to mention the observers whose opinion could not differ, announced a positive evaluation of the elections (OSCE, as it is known, refused to  observe the elections). Besides that the privileges of pro-governmental candidates were so obvious, as indicated in Chart No. 1, that for decency it had to even be slightly reduced.

The analysis of official data, although revealed the 'Fang of Aliyev', but generally it does not implicate massive fraud. 'Fang of Aliyev' appeared to be an artifact, explaining very high turnout in one region – Nakhichevan Autonomous Region, where the turnout greatly differs from other regions of Azerbaijan. Table No. 2 depicts this disparity.

Table No. 2. The turnout in different regions of Azerbaijan

I have not obseved a turnout as high as 146 %; at 5547 polling stations the results were crosschecked. The process of voting at home, absentee votes and the number of invalid and taken away ballots could be tolerated.

Moreover it is impossible to overlook the disrespect of legal requirements regarding the equality of votes. In order to establish equal representation, the Election Code of Azerbaijan (the article 29.3.1) stipulates possible deviation from 5% margin of voters, provisioning exceptions for inaccesible and remote areas. However, in 83 constituencies out of 125 the deviation is higher than 5%, in 48 constituencies – higher than 10%, in 7 constituencies – higher than 20%. It is all the more surprising that the number of election constituencies (125) does not actually commensurates with the number of administrative units (78), whereby many election constituencies incorporate parts of administrative units and vice versa.

The official statistics disclose another obvious fact – a very low level of competition. In this respect, the elections were similar to 2014 Elections in Moscow. Only in very few out of 125 constituencies the moderate oppostion had an opportunity for fair competition. In other constituencies, the supremacy of pro-governmental candidates was overwhelming. In 79 constituencies the disparity between the winner and the following candidate has exceeded 50%.

It is interesting that CCTV cameras were installed at one fifth of polling stations. However, the rules on installation and use of these cameras have not been published. Therefore, we should have hardly expected the efficiency of this method, it served more advertising goals. Although in most of the constituencies, where polling stations were equipped with cameras, the turnout was lower, no significant correlation between the percentage of polling stations with cameras installed and the level of turnout was revealed (see Chart No. 2). Apparently, the latter could be explained by the fact that the election officials did not pay any attention to the cameras.

Chart No 2. The disparity of turnout at polling stations that were not equipped with CCTV cameras and those that were not. The columns correspond to the constituencies. Constituencies depicted with an increase of turnout disparity.

Chart 2. The difference in turnout between polling stations, equipped and not equipped with video cameras. The blue colour demonstrates the difference in turnout. The orange colour shows a share of PECs with CCTV cameras installed.The columns correspond to the constituencies. Counties ordered with an increase in the said difference in turnout

I would like to express my gratitude to those who contributed to the observation in Baku. However considering puritanism of the current Azerbaijani government (some Azeri apologists of free elections still remain in jail) perhaps I will refrain from doing so.