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Russia disagrees with assessment of elections in Azerbaijan

12 November 2010 04:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Russia can not agree with the estimates of the individual states - members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which reduce to the fact that parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, held on November 7, didnâ€™t meet the requirements of international standards, APA reports quoting â€œITAR-TASSâ€. The permanent representative of the Russian Federation to OSCE Anvar Azimov stated at a meeting of OSCE Permanent Council.

"As you know, OSCE has not yet worked out the common rules for monitoring of the electoral processes. Hence, before making such accusations letâ€™s once again take up the elaboration of the document related to the principles of international observation and the status of international observers" â€“ he said.

The permanent representative reminded that one of the numerous monitoring groups had been CIS mission, which included the representatives from the most member-states of CIS. "The mission unanimously agreed that the elections had been transparent, democratic, and most importantly - in full accordance with Azerbaijani legislation. It was stated a fact that the authorities had done all necessary for a representative vote" â€“ he continued.

According to Azimov, the deficiencies, documented by CIS representatives, were minimal and did not affect the results of Azerbaijani citizensâ€™ will.

"CIS mission didnâ€™t receive any serious complaints or comments from the voters, the election commissions, and local observers. Official Statement of the CIS mission, subject to all participantsâ€™ opinion, will be promulgated after the official results of the voting and disseminated in OSCE" â€“ he added.

In this regard, Azimov pointed out that "quite credible and objective conclusions" of CIS experts contrasted with the findings of OSCE / ODIHR observation mission (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights), the observers from OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe, and the European Parliament.

"There are the obvious inconsistencies in the document that these structures spread. So, 90% of the vote, which monitored the polling stations, evaluated positively, but at the end itâ€™s somehow claimed that the whole election campaign supposedly doesnâ€™t indicate the progress of democratic development in the country. The statement of the head of ODIHR’s mission Mrs Audrey Glover, about a certain lack of conditions for hosting free elections and serious violations on election day, is also puzzling, though in the conclusion the report says about the serious and active work of Azerbaijani CEC, as well as non-conflict environment of vote. One can hardly agree with the conclusions regarding "domination of one party in the public and political life, on the one hand, and "participation of all political parties in the elections" â€“ on the other" â€“ he stated.

"It begets a legitimate question - in compiling data findings to what extent many short-term observersâ€™ opinion were taken into account, including Russian, which largely repeated the critical evaluation of the previous interim reports of OSCE / ODIHR mission, compiled by the experts of its â€œcore teamâ€. All this once again convincingly proves that there is a need for significant adjustment of OSCE / ODIHR methodology and practice, - the Russian representative said in conclusion.