Baku: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Thursday celebrated a landslide poll win to tie up a third term and further prolong his family’s vice-like rule, in a vote rubbished by opponents as riddled with violations.
With some 98 per cent of the ballots counted, Aliyev had sealed a crushing majority at yesterday’s vote in the ex-Soviet state notching up around 84.6 per cent, with main opposition challenger Jamil Hasanli far behind in second place with 5.5 per cent, the electoral commission said.
“The presidential election in Azerbaijan was a triumph for democracy,” Aliyev said in a televised address to the nation early Thursday morning. a”The fact that this vote was free and transparent is another important step towards democracy,” Aliyev said. But Hasanli’s election campaign has alleged there were “massive” electoral violations across the resource-rich country and promised not to accept the result.
The 51-year-old Aliyev came to power in a disputed 2003 vote after the death of his powerful father Heydar, a former KGB officer and Communist-era boss who ruled the ex-Soviet nation of 9.5 million people for the preceding 10 years.
During voting at one polling station in Baku — a city which has undergone a glitzy building boom in recent years — voters had waited in silence to cast their ballots under an Azerbaijani flag. (AFP)
