Azerbaijan’s ruling party retains dominance in parliament

Baku, Sep 2 (IANS) Azerbaijan’s ruling New Azerbaijan Party won the most seats in the country’s parliament in a snap election on Sunday, Mazahir Panakhov, the Central Election Commission head said early on Monday after counting the results from about 5,895 polling stations.

Preliminary results suggest that candidates from the ruling New Azerbaijan Party won about 68 of 125 seats in the single-chamber parliament, based on 91 per cent of the vote count, Xinhua news agency reported.A host of small parties and independents took almost all the rest.The voter turnout was 37.27 per cent.The elections were originally scheduled to take place in November 2024. However, in late June 2024, MPs asked President Ilham Aliyev to dissolve the National Assembly and call elections in September to avoid holding them during the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference to be hosted in Baku from 11 to 22 November.–IANSint/sha