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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is set to be reelected by an almost unanimous vote in an election on Wednesday that outside observers say was marred by a harsh crackdown against opposition activists and journalists.
According to an exit poll reported by state news wire Azertag, Aliyev received close to 94 percent of the vote, securing a fifth term in office.
Two other pollsters put the figure at 92 percent. Preliminary results are expected to be published later Wednesday, but the extension of his two decades in office is largely expected to be a formality.
According to Freedom House, the South Caucasus nation ranks among the least free countries in the world and “since the early 1990s, elections have not been considered credible or competitive by international observers.”
At least 13 independent journalists were detained ahead of the vote, and waves of arrests have seen opposition figures and critical academics jailed. Earlier this week, Amnesty International warned of “a widespread, coordinated assault on civil society and the rule of law” in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan, which is a major exporter of gas to the EU and has been hailed as a “crucial partner” by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, will host this year’s COP29 U.N. climate talks.
Aliyev took power in 2003 from his father, Heydar Aliyev, who had governed the country as president since shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.
While the Azerbaijani leader has yet to make a victory speech, he has already held telephone calls with friendly world leaders including Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko congratulating him on what the presidential press service describes as “his confident victory.” Pro-government news outlets report crowds taking to the streets in the capital, Baku, and other towns and cities to celebrate.
In a call Wednesday evening, Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán became the first EU leader to congratulate Aliyev “on his enormous and indisputable victory.”
While the European Parliament was unable to send a delegation to monitor polling stations as it has in previous years, the chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s foreign affairs committee, Grigory Karasin, told local media the polls were being organized effectively and could even act as a model for Russia’s own presidential election later this year.
“We [observers] will bring some experience from Baku to ourselves,” he said. The head of a delegation from the Georgian parliament also maintained that the voting had taken place without issue, according to Azertag.
Opposition activists in the country have posted unverified clips of altercations between polling station staff and election monitors, and of individuals allegedly casting their ballot multiple times.
In September, Azerbaijan’s armed forces launched a 24-hour lightning war to take control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region that had been home to around 100,000 ethnic Armenians. Virtually the entire population fled to Armenia in the wake of the assault, despite Baku’s insistence they could continue living there if they accepted being governed as part of the country.
The snap election was called shortly afterward.
Aliyev and his wife, who serves as his vice president, cast their ballots earlier at a polling station in Khankendi, known to its former Armenian population as Stepanakert. The city is now almost entirely uninhabited following the mass exodus.
