BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 14
Trend:
Parliamentary elections showed again that people value our political course highly, said Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev addressing the first session of the Azerbaijani Parliament’s sixth convocation on March 10, Trend reports.
“The Milli Majlis of the sixth convocation begins its work today. I heartily congratulate all the MPs on this occasion and wish you success. First of all, I want to express my gratitude to members of the Milli Majlis of the fifth convocation for their activities. The Milli Majlis of the fifth convocation, its members and leaders played a major role in the successful development of our country. The laws adopted by the parliament have strengthened the legal foundations of our successful development. I am sure that the Milli Majlis of the sixth convocation will also work successfully and thus contribute to the wide-ranging and comprehensive reforms under way in our country, to deepening them,” said the head of state.
He noted that the parliamentary elections held on 9 February became an important event in the life of our country.
“All elections are important, but the latest were special because they were early elections. The main reason for holding these elections in February was to deepen the reforms and organize the work of the new Milli Majlis without wasting any time. I believe that the elections were successful and there was a lot of interest in them this time. Clear evidence of this is the participation of more than 1300 candidates in the elections. Of course, candidates were able to carry out extensive work, freely convey their thoughts, views and ideas to the voters. Equal conditions were created for all the candidates and there was no discrimination. In fact, the participation of more than 1300 candidates is a manifestation of their confidence in the elections. I believe that in general the electoral process was successful and the results reflect the will of the Azerbaijani people. The key thing is that the Azerbaijani people were satisfied with the elections, as once again witnessed by the events observed after the elections,” said the head of state.
“We invited many international organizations and observers to follow the elections, and the vast majority of them very positively evaluated the period of preparations, the campaigning and the voting day,” he said.
“It is possible to say that the vast majority of observers assessed the elections as yet another successful step towards the development of democracy and stated that the Azerbaijani people freely exercises their suffrage and the election results reflect the real picture. The international observers who declared this, of course, reflected the real state of affairs. At the same time, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and some organizations under its influence, which always approach the electoral process in Azerbaijan through the prism of double standards and bias, have again tried to exaggerate some minor irregularities in order to present them as a major event. No elections are perfect. There were shortcomings this time too and the cancellation of results in four districts shows that Azerbaijan itself is interested in not having such shortcomings. Post-election processes have once again demonstrated that our intention was to enable Azerbaijani people to freely exercise their suffrage and vote for their candidate, thus expressing their opinion and political will. In general, we succeeded in doing that, and the picture observed after the election shows that the Azerbaijani people agreed with the election results. This is the main thing for us,” said the head of state.
President Ilham Aliyev said at the same time he believes that the European Union made a very objective statement in connection with the elections.
“It expressed its readiness to work with the newly-elected MPs, the Azerbaijani parliament. This essentially means recognition of the elections. As for the opinion of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, apparently due to the absence of serious incidents, it had to present its report in a somewhat balanced manner this time. However, we have long known that their reports are written before elections. We also know where they are written. In addition, the recent statements by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and its assessment of the elections in some countries show again how biased and prejudiced they are. This shows that this organization is fulfilling a political order. The latest example was the parliamentary elections held in Armenia in 2018. As you know, those elections were completely rigged by the then ruling fascist party of the Republicans. I call this party fascist not only because of their ideology and essence, but also because it is enough to look at their emblem to understand that it doesn’t differ much from the emblem of fascist Germany. And the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights gave a positive conclusion on those rigged elections, during which the Republican Party appropriated more than 50 percent of the votes. In other words, it became an accomplice in this falsification, and the events that followed are known to all,” said the head of state.
President Ilham Aliyev noted that after that, this illegal and corrupt regime was overthrown, the deputies allegedly representing them in the Armenian parliament surrendered, raised their hands up and stepped aside with a miserable look.
“New parliamentary elections were called, and the fascist Republican Party was not able to get into parliament at all. What does this suggest? This suggests that the results of the elections that had been rigged two or three months prior to these elections were evident, but the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights expressed a positive opinion about this rigging. So by citing this as an example, I want to say again that the opinion of this organization does not mean anything at all to us because it is written on the basis of a political order and serves, as it were, a means of pressure for leading circles of some states. I want to mention another issue related to observers. Honestly, I was surprised by this too. I can say that in the current elections we saw all the organizations we invited as observers. However, we did not send an invitation to the European Parliament because, firstly, we are not a member of this organization, and secondly, we do not see the need for that for about the same reasons. The European Parliament is the leader in adopting unfair resolutions against Azerbaijan. Their resolutions have absolutely no meaning for us too. However, I must say that such trends against us are still being observed today. So we did not invite this organization. But they circulated a statement that they refuse to observe these elections. This, to put it mildly, is a political falsification because we did not invite you, we don’t want to see you here and we don’t believe you. This being the case, to say that they are refusing to observe the elections is ridiculous and surprising,” said the head of state.
“In other words, the elections showed again that the people value our political course highly,” said President Ilham Aliyev.
“I believe that post-election processes will develop in a positive direction. The Milli Majlis of the sixth convocation is a multi-party parliament. This is a very positive sign. I believe that the Milli Majlis will and should play a huge role in improving the political system. All political forces took part in the elections. The marginal group calling itself the opposition allegedly boycotted the elections. This is ridiculous because the Azerbaijani people have long boycotted this disgraceful entity which has been in the dustbin of history for 27 years. Under such circumstances, the announcement of a boycott is both funny and surprising,” said the head of state.