BAKU, Azerbaijan -- Western observers said Monday that Azerbaijan's weekend parliamentary elections fell far short of international standards due to widespread irregularities in voting and vote counting.
A threat of unrest hung over the country as the opposition Azadliq coalition demanded repeat elections for 100 of the 125 seats in the parliament and vowed to hold their largest protest rally yet on Wednesday.
Preliminary official results on Monday gave President Ilham Aliyev's ruling New Azerbaijan Party the lead in 62 seats and independents -- many of whom are government loyalists -- the lead in 42, leaving the opposition with just 10.
Partial results from an exit poll for the U.S. Agency for International Development that were released Monday contradicted the official results in nine districts, putting seven Azadliq candidates ahead of pro-government candidates.
A pro-government member of the Central Elections Commission, Fuad Javadov, denied there had been widespread fraud in Sunday's elections. "The election process ran normally. There were isolated flaws, that's all," he said.
But Alcee Hastings, the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's observer mission, said the vote "did not meet a number of OSCE and Council of Europe standards for democratic elections."
"It pains me to note that there were a number of significant deficiencies in the vote count by the authorities," Hastings said.
He also criticized the government for banning opposition rallies in the run-up to the elections.
Leo Platvoet, head of a Council of Europe delegation, said that 43 percent of vote counts observed by the more than 650 Western observers had been "bad or very bad." He criticized state television coverage during the campaign, saying that while equal airtime for campaign ads had been respected, the rest of state media coverage had been "overwhelmingly in favor" of the ruling party.
The United States called on the Azeri government "to take immediate investigations into these irregularities and fraud consistent with Azerbaijan's laws," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said, The Associated Press reported.
Ereli also said the United States was urging that "all protests and demonstrations need to be peaceful."
Aliyev said his government would review the Western criticism and take steps to correct shortcomings. He insisted, however, that violations had occurred only in a small number of districts.
Opposition leaders estimated they had won "50 to 60" more seats than the official figures showed.
Speaking at a chaotic news conference in a run-down party office crowded with journalists, Musavat party leader Isa Gambar held up what he said were vote protocols that election officials had refused to sign and said that "most violations, as in the old joke, took place after the polls closed."
Hundreds of opposition supporters milled around on the street outside the building as he and other leaders of the Azadliq bloc spoke.
Popular Front leader Ali Kerimli said the government had cheated in the vote counting because "even all the previous falsifications were not enough for them to win."
Gambar said Azadliq would mount "one of the biggest rallies in post-Soviet history" on Wednesday and insisted the opposition would not "use any kind of violence."
Murad Gasanli, an adviser to Kerimli, called the way the count was conducted in the 22 polling stations he visited in Kerimli's district "a despicable fraud." Police kicked out opposition and independent observers from polling stations, and hours later election officials turned up with "sacks of protocols from nowhere," he said.
Gasanli claimed that no OSCE observers had visited polling stations late Sunday after the opposition asked them to witness its observers being thrown out of the stations.
"Two officials turned up only at 2 a.m., when the election commission head had already turned up with false protocols," Gasanli said. "It was too late then."
He also expressed concern that no exit polls were carried out by USAID in the three Baku districts where opposition leaders Kerimli, Gambar and Rasul Guliyev were running. Guliyev's attempted return from exile last month prompted a government purge that Aliyev said was to foil an attempted coup.
Jonathan Henick, a press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baku, defended the decision to carry out the exit poll in 65 out of the 125 seats, saying that covering the whole country would have been "logistically difficult" in a short period of time. Aliyev's government only gave the go-ahead for foreign-funded exit polls in May.
Henick said the districts for the exit poll had been chosen randomly by computer by the U.S. firm carrying out the poll, PA Consulting.
"We had no idea this would be an issue," he said in response to a question about why the opposition leaders' districts had not been included.
A separate group of Western observers, from the European Union of Liberal Youth, said that vote counting in three districts near the border with Dagestan had been largely fair but that election officials and police had interfered with the voting process, advising people whom to vote for under the guise of welcoming them to the polling stations. The inking of voters' fingers, they said, was chaotic, and some party observers were seen going into voting booths with voters.
"Police were hanging around polling stations everywhere, despite the law saying they should not be within 50 meters," said Yanki Pursun, the head of the delegation.
The U.S. State Department was expected to give its assessment of the election from Washington late Monday.
A threat of unrest hung over the country as the opposition Azadliq coalition demanded repeat elections for 100 of the 125 seats in the parliament and vowed to hold their largest protest rally yet on Wednesday.
Preliminary official results on Monday gave President Ilham Aliyev's ruling New Azerbaijan Party the lead in 62 seats and independents -- many of whom are government loyalists -- the lead in 42, leaving the opposition with just 10.
Partial results from an exit poll for the U.S. Agency for International Development that were released Monday contradicted the official results in nine districts, putting seven Azadliq candidates ahead of pro-government candidates.
A pro-government member of the Central Elections Commission, Fuad Javadov, denied there had been widespread fraud in Sunday's elections. "The election process ran normally. There were isolated flaws, that's all," he said.
But Alcee Hastings, the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's observer mission, said the vote "did not meet a number of OSCE and Council of Europe standards for democratic elections."
"It pains me to note that there were a number of significant deficiencies in the vote count by the authorities," Hastings said.
He also criticized the government for banning opposition rallies in the run-up to the elections.
Leo Platvoet, head of a Council of Europe delegation, said that 43 percent of vote counts observed by the more than 650 Western observers had been "bad or very bad." He criticized state television coverage during the campaign, saying that while equal airtime for campaign ads had been respected, the rest of state media coverage had been "overwhelmingly in favor" of the ruling party.
The United States called on the Azeri government "to take immediate investigations into these irregularities and fraud consistent with Azerbaijan's laws," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said, The Associated Press reported.
Ereli also said the United States was urging that "all protests and demonstrations need to be peaceful."
Aliyev said his government would review the Western criticism and take steps to correct shortcomings. He insisted, however, that violations had occurred only in a small number of districts.
Opposition leaders estimated they had won "50 to 60" more seats than the official figures showed.
Speaking at a chaotic news conference in a run-down party office crowded with journalists, Musavat party leader Isa Gambar held up what he said were vote protocols that election officials had refused to sign and said that "most violations, as in the old joke, took place after the polls closed."
Hundreds of opposition supporters milled around on the street outside the building as he and other leaders of the Azadliq bloc spoke.
 Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters A woman and two children passing a line of army trucks in Baku on Monday. |  |
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Gambar said Azadliq would mount "one of the biggest rallies in post-Soviet history" on Wednesday and insisted the opposition would not "use any kind of violence."
Murad Gasanli, an adviser to Kerimli, called the way the count was conducted in the 22 polling stations he visited in Kerimli's district "a despicable fraud." Police kicked out opposition and independent observers from polling stations, and hours later election officials turned up with "sacks of protocols from nowhere," he said.
Gasanli claimed that no OSCE observers had visited polling stations late Sunday after the opposition asked them to witness its observers being thrown out of the stations.
"Two officials turned up only at 2 a.m., when the election commission head had already turned up with false protocols," Gasanli said. "It was too late then."
He also expressed concern that no exit polls were carried out by USAID in the three Baku districts where opposition leaders Kerimli, Gambar and Rasul Guliyev were running. Guliyev's attempted return from exile last month prompted a government purge that Aliyev said was to foil an attempted coup.
Jonathan Henick, a press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baku, defended the decision to carry out the exit poll in 65 out of the 125 seats, saying that covering the whole country would have been "logistically difficult" in a short period of time. Aliyev's government only gave the go-ahead for foreign-funded exit polls in May.
Henick said the districts for the exit poll had been chosen randomly by computer by the U.S. firm carrying out the poll, PA Consulting.
"We had no idea this would be an issue," he said in response to a question about why the opposition leaders' districts had not been included.
A separate group of Western observers, from the European Union of Liberal Youth, said that vote counting in three districts near the border with Dagestan had been largely fair but that election officials and police had interfered with the voting process, advising people whom to vote for under the guise of welcoming them to the polling stations. The inking of voters' fingers, they said, was chaotic, and some party observers were seen going into voting booths with voters.
"Police were hanging around polling stations everywhere, despite the law saying they should not be within 50 meters," said Yanki Pursun, the head of the delegation.
The U.S. State Department was expected to give its assessment of the election from Washington late Monday.
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