The ruling party won early parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan with 68 out of 125 seats. The vote was boycotted by part of the opposition.
Unsurprisingly, according to provisional results, the early parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan were won by the ruling party with 68 seats out of 125 in the parliament.
On Sunday, 6.4 million voters were called to the polls to elect their deputies. A vote whose date was brought forward, because the country must organize the COP29 in November.
“A total of 11 political parties will be represented in parliament after these elections, but these are preliminary results. Thus, in total, only ten political parties have won 13 seats in parliament. According to the preliminary results, the turnout for the whole country is 37.27%.”said Rovzat Gasimov, Deputy Chairman of the Central Election Commission of Azerbaijan.
While part of the opposition boycotted the election, the electoral campaign resulted in numerous arrests among opponents of the regime.
Voting also took place in the Nagorno-Karabakh region for the first time in 30 years. The election comes less than a year after Azerbaijani forces recaptured the region, which had been under the control of pro-Armenian forces since 1994. The military operation has drawn widespread international criticism for Baku.
Since its independence in 1991, Azerbaijan has been ruled by the Aliyev family. The current president, Ilham Aliyev, succeeded his father in 2003, and leads the country alongside his wife, who was appointed vice-president in 2017.