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EVENTS IN OCTOBER 2013 IN BAKU REVEAL A BROKEN SYSTEM FOR INTERNATIONAL ELECTION OBSERVATION
19:11 06/11/2013 " SOCIETY
European Stability Initiative think tank, which had previously
published two reports exposing the bias of international observers
regarding democracy and human rights assessment in Azerbaijan, has
issued a new report on the latest presidential elections in Azerbaijan
titled DISGRACED: AZERBAIJAN AND THE END OF ELECTION MONITORING AS
WE KNOW IT
The report brings up the question of controversial assessments
given by 50 election monitoring organizations, 49 out of which gave
a positive assessment to the elections, terming them as "free and
fair", while only one organization - OSCE/ODIHR harshly criticized
it bringing up cases of "systemic fraud". The authors of the report
question the methodology employed by international election monitoring
groups in general, calling for the review of these mechanisms. The
report also raises the question as to what the election observers
who gave positive assessments were motivated by. By examining these
persons' prior activities the report reveals that many of them either
had connections with Azerbaijani elite and Azerbaijani lobbying
organizations or had some other vested interest in "whitewashing"
the fraudulent elections in Azerbaijan.
Below are extracts from the summary of the report.
"Forty-nine monitoring groups praised the elections as free and
fair, meeting European standards. One group of international election
monitors refused to go along with the praise: the election monitoring
mission of ODIHR, the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and
Human Rights.
Only ODIHR employed a core team of experts and long-term observers,
who arrived in the country many weeks before the day of elections. In
addition ODIHR mobilized a large number of short-term observers for the
elections themselves. ODIHR monitors observed voting in 1,151 of the
5,273 polling stations across the country. The evidence of systemic
fraud was overwhelming. ODIHR also observed 105 vote counts out of
125 constituency election commissions. While voting was problematic,
the counting of ballots was catastrophic, with 58 per cent of observed
polling stations assessed as bad or very bad. It may have been the
worst vote count ever observed by an ODIHR election observation
mission anywhere.
The events in October 2013 in Baku reveal a broken system for
international election observation.
This report argues that the future of election monitoring on the
European continent depends on how decision makers - in the European
Parliament, in the Council of Europe, in the OSCE Parliamentary
Assembly and in European governments - react now. It is vital to
revisit the facts and analyses behind the different assessments,
and to retrace how different groups of observers could arrive at
radically diverging conclusions. The relationship between long-
and short-term election observers needs to be rethought.
Aliyev's victory and its scandalous endorsement by most international
monitors offer an opportunity to fix a broken system. Doing so
would benefit not just Azerbaijanis, but all those who believe that
democratic elections are celebrations of basic human rights, in Europe
and around the world."
http://www.panorama.am/en/society/2013/11/06/report/
http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_document_id_131.pdf
http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_document_id_134.pdf
http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_document_id_145.pdf
19:11 06/11/2013 " SOCIETY
European Stability Initiative think tank, which had previously
published two reports exposing the bias of international observers
regarding democracy and human rights assessment in Azerbaijan, has
issued a new report on the latest presidential elections in Azerbaijan
titled DISGRACED: AZERBAIJAN AND THE END OF ELECTION MONITORING AS
WE KNOW IT
The report brings up the question of controversial assessments
given by 50 election monitoring organizations, 49 out of which gave
a positive assessment to the elections, terming them as "free and
fair", while only one organization - OSCE/ODIHR harshly criticized
it bringing up cases of "systemic fraud". The authors of the report
question the methodology employed by international election monitoring
groups in general, calling for the review of these mechanisms. The
report also raises the question as to what the election observers
who gave positive assessments were motivated by. By examining these
persons' prior activities the report reveals that many of them either
had connections with Azerbaijani elite and Azerbaijani lobbying
organizations or had some other vested interest in "whitewashing"
the fraudulent elections in Azerbaijan.
Below are extracts from the summary of the report.
"Forty-nine monitoring groups praised the elections as free and
fair, meeting European standards. One group of international election
monitors refused to go along with the praise: the election monitoring
mission of ODIHR, the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and
Human Rights.
Only ODIHR employed a core team of experts and long-term observers,
who arrived in the country many weeks before the day of elections. In
addition ODIHR mobilized a large number of short-term observers for the
elections themselves. ODIHR monitors observed voting in 1,151 of the
5,273 polling stations across the country. The evidence of systemic
fraud was overwhelming. ODIHR also observed 105 vote counts out of
125 constituency election commissions. While voting was problematic,
the counting of ballots was catastrophic, with 58 per cent of observed
polling stations assessed as bad or very bad. It may have been the
worst vote count ever observed by an ODIHR election observation
mission anywhere.
The events in October 2013 in Baku reveal a broken system for
international election observation.
This report argues that the future of election monitoring on the
European continent depends on how decision makers - in the European
Parliament, in the Council of Europe, in the OSCE Parliamentary
Assembly and in European governments - react now. It is vital to
revisit the facts and analyses behind the different assessments,
and to retrace how different groups of observers could arrive at
radically diverging conclusions. The relationship between long-
and short-term election observers needs to be rethought.
Aliyev's victory and its scandalous endorsement by most international
monitors offer an opportunity to fix a broken system. Doing so
would benefit not just Azerbaijanis, but all those who believe that
democratic elections are celebrations of basic human rights, in Europe
and around the world."
http://www.panorama.am/en/society/2013/11/06/report/
http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_document_id_131.pdf
http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_document_id_134.pdf
http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_document_id_145.pdf