Azerbaijan’s ruling party was set to retain its majority in Sunday’s snap parliamentary election, election officials said, in the country’s first vote since staging a lightning offensive a year ago to recapture the breakaway territory of Karabakh.
President Ilham Aliyev’s party was on course to win 67 out of 125 seats in the parliament, based on 91% of the vote count, Central Election Commission chief Mazahir Panakhov said at a media conference.
That is nearly on par with the 69 seats in the outgoing parliament.
Just over 2 million people in Azerbaijan, a country that’s bounded by the Caspian Sea and Caucasus Mountains, voted, bringing the turnout at the time of the close of polling stations to 37.3%, Panakhov said.
According to exit polls, dozens of other seats were set to go to candidates who are nominally independent of political parties but in practice back the government, and to minor pro-government parties.
