The head of Europe's election-monitoring mission to Azerbaijan said Thursday there was a "lack of robust competition" on the ballot and President Ilham Aliyev's landslide re-election feel short of democratic norms, according to dpa. With the only real opposition boycotting the vote, Aliyev sailed to an easy win on Wednesday, sealing near 90 per cent of the Caspian states 4.7 million votes. "The election did not reflect all principals of a meaningful democratic election," Boris Frlec, the head of the OSCE's election observer mission, told journalist in Baku one day after the balloting. He added, however, that the post-Soviet state had seen "notable improvements overall from voting in previous elections," when Aliyev's father Heydar held reign over the oil-rich country for over 35 years. The OSCE mission sited "a series of violations" and "some manipulations" at some polling stations, but said there had been progress in the transparency of the country's elections process.
