BAKU, February 9. /TASS/. The voter turnout in Sunday’s early parliamentary election in Azerbaijan was 47.81%, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said on Sunday.
According to the CEC, more than 2.5 million people cast their ballots in the polls.
The voter turnout at the parliamentary polls in 2015 was 55.7%
Early parliamentary polls were called by President Ilham Aliyev in December 2019 after the parliament’s voluntary dissolution.
The early parliamentary polls in Azerbaijan were held on the basis of majority voting in single-mandate constituencies. A total of 1,314 candidates are vying for 125 seats in Azerbaijan’s parliament. Eleven of them were nominated by voter groups, 246 by 19 political parties and 1,057 were self-nominated. Under the law, no vote is held abroad unlike in presidential polls and referendums. The election will be considered valid regardless of the turnout as there is no threshold.
As many as 883 observers representing 59 international organizations have been accredited for the polls. The most representative mission of 380 members was sent by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The mission of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) consists of 252 experts, while the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has a mission of 25 members. The number of local observers has exceeded 77,000, including more than 30,000 from political parties.