The Malaysian newspaper, “The Star”, has published (17 October) an article about the presidential elections held recently in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan`s ambassador to Malaysia Tahir Karimov has forwarded a letter of protest to Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper Datuk Wong Chun Wai related to distortion of the facts in the article.

The newspaper`s editorial staff apologized for the misunderstanding and expressed their readiness to publish the Embassy`s response.

The letter entitled “Azerbaijan polls closer to meeting EU standards” was published in the newspaper on 4 November.

It reads: “I refer to the report “Azerbaijan president re-elected by landslide” (The Star, Oct 17).

There are some negative points in the report so I deem appropriate to be clarified.

Firstly, regarding the statement by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on some election campaign irregularities, I would like to emphasize that the International Election Observation Mission which was monitoring the election has stated that: “The Central Election Commission organized the election in an efficient manner, held frequent sessions which were open to the media and observers, published decisions on its website and carried out large-scale voter awareness campaign and comprehensive training of election officials.”

Moreover, the IEOM concluded that the elections marked considerable progress towards meeting OSCE and Council of Europe commitments and other international standards.

Secondly, with regards to the description that my country being closer to a monarchy than a democracy, I would like to reaffirm that by sharing the European values, Azerbaijan is a pluralistic, democratic state and one of its main foreign policy priorities is integration into the Euro-Atlantic structures.

Furthermore, during the first term presidency of Ilham Aliyev, the rapid development in all spheres in Azerbaijan is for all to see.

Our economy has been ranked among the world’s economic growth leaders, by growing up to 25% in comparison with the previous year.

All state programs in socio-economic and humanitarian fields were in full swing and about 700, 000 job places have been opened since 2003.”

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