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OSCE’s Baku Office will continue to voice its initiatives on improving electoral legislation in Azerbaijan. “We will discuss the opposition’s proposals on the Electoral Code with the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the government. Certainly, the process to improve laws is endless. Every law may have shortcomings,” the head of OSCE’s Baku Office, Ali Bilge Dzhankorel, told Trend News on September 7.
After joint discussions between the Azerbaijani government and the CE Venice Commission, conducted before the presidential elections on Oct. 15, 2008, the Electoral Code was amended and changed.
However, the additions and changes did not include the Azerbaijani opposition’s proposal concerning the formation of electoral commissions on a parity basis, despite the recommendations of the Venice Commission.
“The formation of election commissions on a parity basis is impossible in Azerbaijan, at least, under the present conditions. Political organizations and political parties permanently violate the requirements of the law and principal agreements for their own political ambitions and interests,” head of the Social-Political Department of the Presidential Administration, Ali Hasanov, said in an exclusive interview with Trend News.
Dzhankorel said that the OSCE supports laws in which there are minimum limitations and with which everyone is satisfied. “We will continue our activity in this sphere,” the OSCE official representative said.
