Azerbaijan To Hold Parliamentary Elections In November
July 04, 2005
An opposition demonstration in Baku in June
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Baku, 4 July 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's office today announced that Azerbaijan will hold parliamentary elections on 6 November.
Voting for the 125-seat single-chamber parliament, or Milli Majlis, will for the first time be entirely on the basis of electoral districts, rather than by proportional representation, following constitutional changes in 2002.
The vote comes against a backdrop of unrest that has continued sporadically since a riot in the aftermath of Aliyev's presidential election victory in 2003, when two people died in rioting.
A preelection report published last month by one of the main election-monitoring bodies, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, outlined several problems that it advised the authorities to address in order to ensure fair polls.
(RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service, AFP)