POLITICS
Azerbaijan: voting starts; more than 50 per cent candidates below 40, 126-year-old woman the oldest voter, Bernama News Agency
Baku, February 9, AZERTAC
The Malaysian Bernama News Agency has published an article headlined “Azerbaijan: voting starts; more than 50 per cent candidates below 40, 126-year-old woman the oldest voter”.
Written by Editor of the agency’s International Desk Rachminakan Ravichandran, the article highlights the parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan.
The article reads: “Azerbaijan voters began voting for 125 seats of the National Assembly (Milli Majlis) in the snap parliamentary election today (Feb 9), with a 126-year-old woman being the oldest voter and more than 50 per cent of the candidates are under the age of 40.
Voting begins at 8 am and closes at 7 pm (local time), to be followed with the vote-counting process. There are 5,573 polling stations.
A total of 5.3 million voters will decide the fate of the contesting candidates in the election seen as an opportunity for the younger generation and more educated ones to be part of the political process of the country. Three groups are allowed to conduct exit polls at this election.
Head of Azerbaijan's Central Election Commission (CEC) Mazahir Panahov told local and international media in a press conference that the CEC is fully ready for the election and that all preparations are completed.
He also pointed out one more interesting thing about this election - that more than 90 per cent of the 1,314 candidates from the 19 contesting political parties are university graduates.
Meanwhile, the oldest voter, Allahverdiyeva Samargand, had also voted during the 2018 presidential election where incumbent President Ilham Aliyev won a fourth term as the president of the republic.
"She was born in 1894, living in the Barda region of Azerbaijan. The 126-year-old woman has witnessed three centuries," Panahov said, adding that the oldest male voter is 108-year-old Ahmadov Shahverdi.
Panahov also said that 6,189 people will vote for the first time. The eligible voting age in Azerbaijan is 18 years old.
Besides that, some 79 per cent of the candidates are males, and 21 per cent are females.
Some 89,676 local observers and 883 international observers have been granted accreditation to observe the election, while web-cameras have been installed at about 1,000 polling stations. Some 199 representatives from 132 international mass media outlets have been given access to cover the election.
In the last parliamentary election held in 2015, the ruling New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) won 69 out of 125 seats.
After asserting its independence in 1918 and prior to its incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1920, Azerbaijan, located at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, gained the distinction of being the first democratic state in the Muslim world. In October 1991, Azerbaijan declared its independence from the then Soviet Union.”