YENI GUNESHLI, Azerbaijan -- As election officials divided ballots into piles for counting after polls closed in Sunday's parliamentary elections, one official, Nayib Mamedzade, noted with satisfaction that the pile for opposition leader Ali Kerimli at School No. 279 dwarfed the pile of his main rival, a candidate for the ruling New Azerbaijan Party.
Just before Kerimli's votes were counted, however, the local elections committee chief halted the process, and ordered them placed in a ballot box and taken to the principal's office, Mamedzade said.
Hours later, at 2 a.m. on Monday, the elections committee declared that New Azerbaijan candidate Ali Garakhanov was in the lead in the vote in Yeni Guneshli, a small town 15 kilometers east of Baku.
The Central Elections Commission confirmed Garakhanov's victory with 47 percent of the vote on Monday, ignoring complaints from the opposition Azadliq bloc that Kerimli had won 26 out of the town's 28 precincts.
Under strong criticism, the commission ordered a recount in 18 precincts Tuesday and declared Kerimli the winner on Wednesday.
The reversal was a small but important victory for the opposition, which claims to have recorded 21,000 electoral violations nationwide.
Observers with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, said Monday that the vote had fallen short of international standards.
President Ilham Aliyev initially downplayed criticism, saying significant flaws only occurred in 12 or 13 districts, but on Wednesday fired two governors -- including the head of the Surakhani region, where School No. 279 is located.
Mamedzade, the opposition representative at the school, said he put up a fight when the ballots were ordered into the principal's office.
"I protested that they must count the votes, but they ignored me. So I grabbed the box with all my might and wouldn't let go," Mamedzade said, describing the night's events over tea in a local cafe Tuesday.
He said he resisted other officials' attempts to wrest the ballot box out of his hands for about an hour, but then the police turned up. "The police then forced everyone to leave," he said.
"We waited outside for the OSCE to come, but we don't know if they came or not. We didn't see them, as we weren't allowed back into the polling station.
"It was the same as in 2003," he said, referring to the election that brought Aliyev to power and has also been criticized by international observers. "This time, the president signed a decree promising free elections, but nobody followed it."
Mamedzade also said he witnessed many irregularities earlier in the day during the voting, including officials advising voters whom to pick.
"I saw ballots given to voters that were already filled in for Garakhanov," he said. "Some honorable people refused to go along and voted for other candidates instead."
Mamedzade's account tallies with reports by the OSCE observers and other journalists who witnessed violations in Kerimli's district. A group of reporters, including a BBC television crew, saw officials removing ballot boxes and throwing ballot papers on the floor, and police throwing out observers from several polling stations.
The opposition has accused the authorities of orchestrating particularly blatant fraud in the districts where Kerimli and two other opposition leaders, Isa Gambar and Rasul Guliyev, were candidates.
About a half-dozen men, who had apparently heard that a foreign reporter was speaking with Mamedzade in the small town's cafe, stopped by to vouch for the opposition's claims of widespread fraud. They flashed the badges of polling station volunteers and waited patiently in line for up to 30 minutes to tell their stories.
The men said police and government supporters threw them out of polling stations in Yeni Guneshli and a neighboring district, where Anar Mammadkhanov, a close ally of Aliyev, was later declared the winner with 46 percent of the vote.
Rahib Miralamov, 23, who showed a volunteer's identity card for the neighboring district, said he saw about 30 police officers and six or seven Mammadkhanov supporters beat an observer who was there on behalf of a rival New Azerbaijan Party candidate.
Infighting in the ruling party has been growing in recent months, with some government ministers reportedly funding opposition parties and independent candidates. Multiple New Azerbaijan Party candidates represented competing business interests in some districts.
More than 400 candidates for the ruling party ran in the election, which saw a vast majority of sitting lawmakers re-elected. The last parliamentary election, in 2000, was held on a mixed system of single-mandate contests and party lists, whereas this time all contests were single-mandate seats.
In the last few weeks of the election campaign, about 500 of the more than 2,000 registered candidates withdrew from the race, many complaining of intimidation and pressure from the authorities.
A few people in the cafe said the election was fair and accused the opposition of lying. They would not answer specific questions about the conduct of the elections and refused to give their names. Heated arguments broke out several times, with supporters from both sides disputing the other's statements.
One man, who would only identify himself as a polling station volunteer, described the election process as "normal" but would not go into details.
A taxi driver, who also refused to give his name, said police had interfered with the election "just because they wanted to keep everything quiet."
Outside the cafe, an old woman joined in the argument, accusing the opposition of wrecking the country when they were briefly in power in the early 1990s. "Ilham Aliyev is good! Ali Kerimli is bad!" she shouted several times, interrupting a cosmetics saleswoman in her mid-30s who was trying to share her impressions of the elections.
The saleswoman, who said she was afraid to have her name published, said she planned to join other opposition supporters in Baku on Wednesday to protest the official election results.
"Now, now, dear," she told the old woman. "Why do you like the authorities so much? Did they ever give you anything?"
A group of men passing by said they also would go to the rally, and one said, "Someone paid the old lady to shout."
Just before Kerimli's votes were counted, however, the local elections committee chief halted the process, and ordered them placed in a ballot box and taken to the principal's office, Mamedzade said.
Hours later, at 2 a.m. on Monday, the elections committee declared that New Azerbaijan candidate Ali Garakhanov was in the lead in the vote in Yeni Guneshli, a small town 15 kilometers east of Baku.
The Central Elections Commission confirmed Garakhanov's victory with 47 percent of the vote on Monday, ignoring complaints from the opposition Azadliq bloc that Kerimli had won 26 out of the town's 28 precincts.
Under strong criticism, the commission ordered a recount in 18 precincts Tuesday and declared Kerimli the winner on Wednesday.
The reversal was a small but important victory for the opposition, which claims to have recorded 21,000 electoral violations nationwide.
Observers with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, said Monday that the vote had fallen short of international standards.
President Ilham Aliyev initially downplayed criticism, saying significant flaws only occurred in 12 or 13 districts, but on Wednesday fired two governors -- including the head of the Surakhani region, where School No. 279 is located.
Mamedzade, the opposition representative at the school, said he put up a fight when the ballots were ordered into the principal's office.
"I protested that they must count the votes, but they ignored me. So I grabbed the box with all my might and wouldn't let go," Mamedzade said, describing the night's events over tea in a local cafe Tuesday.
He said he resisted other officials' attempts to wrest the ballot box out of his hands for about an hour, but then the police turned up. "The police then forced everyone to leave," he said.
"We waited outside for the OSCE to come, but we don't know if they came or not. We didn't see them, as we weren't allowed back into the polling station.
"It was the same as in 2003," he said, referring to the election that brought Aliyev to power and has also been criticized by international observers. "This time, the president signed a decree promising free elections, but nobody followed it."
Mamedzade also said he witnessed many irregularities earlier in the day during the voting, including officials advising voters whom to pick.
"I saw ballots given to voters that were already filled in for Garakhanov," he said. "Some honorable people refused to go along and voted for other candidates instead."
Mamedzade's account tallies with reports by the OSCE observers and other journalists who witnessed violations in Kerimli's district. A group of reporters, including a BBC television crew, saw officials removing ballot boxes and throwing ballot papers on the floor, and police throwing out observers from several polling stations.
The opposition has accused the authorities of orchestrating particularly blatant fraud in the districts where Kerimli and two other opposition leaders, Isa Gambar and Rasul Guliyev, were candidates.
About a half-dozen men, who had apparently heard that a foreign reporter was speaking with Mamedzade in the small town's cafe, stopped by to vouch for the opposition's claims of widespread fraud. They flashed the badges of polling station volunteers and waited patiently in line for up to 30 minutes to tell their stories.
The men said police and government supporters threw them out of polling stations in Yeni Guneshli and a neighboring district, where Anar Mammadkhanov, a close ally of Aliyev, was later declared the winner with 46 percent of the vote.
Rahib Miralamov, 23, who showed a volunteer's identity card for the neighboring district, said he saw about 30 police officers and six or seven Mammadkhanov supporters beat an observer who was there on behalf of a rival New Azerbaijan Party candidate.
Infighting in the ruling party has been growing in recent months, with some government ministers reportedly funding opposition parties and independent candidates. Multiple New Azerbaijan Party candidates represented competing business interests in some districts.
More than 400 candidates for the ruling party ran in the election, which saw a vast majority of sitting lawmakers re-elected. The last parliamentary election, in 2000, was held on a mixed system of single-mandate contests and party lists, whereas this time all contests were single-mandate seats.
In the last few weeks of the election campaign, about 500 of the more than 2,000 registered candidates withdrew from the race, many complaining of intimidation and pressure from the authorities.
A few people in the cafe said the election was fair and accused the opposition of lying. They would not answer specific questions about the conduct of the elections and refused to give their names. Heated arguments broke out several times, with supporters from both sides disputing the other's statements.
One man, who would only identify himself as a polling station volunteer, described the election process as "normal" but would not go into details.
A taxi driver, who also refused to give his name, said police had interfered with the election "just because they wanted to keep everything quiet."
Outside the cafe, an old woman joined in the argument, accusing the opposition of wrecking the country when they were briefly in power in the early 1990s. "Ilham Aliyev is good! Ali Kerimli is bad!" she shouted several times, interrupting a cosmetics saleswoman in her mid-30s who was trying to share her impressions of the elections.
The saleswoman, who said she was afraid to have her name published, said she planned to join other opposition supporters in Baku on Wednesday to protest the official election results.
"Now, now, dear," she told the old woman. "Why do you like the authorities so much? Did they ever give you anything?"
A group of men passing by said they also would go to the rally, and one said, "Someone paid the old lady to shout."
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