By AIDA SULTANOVA
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev leaves a polling station in Baku, Azerbaijan, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2013. Oil-rich Azerbaijan is booming and the wealth is trickling down to its poorest people. It all means that its president doesn’t even need to clamp down too hard to ensure he extends a decades-long dynastic rule in elections on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — Azerbaijan’s president won a third five-year term by a landslide in Wednesday’s vote, according to exit polls, extending decades of dynastic rule in the oil-rich Caspian Sea nation allied with the West.
A poll conducted by the independent Prognosis polling company said Ilham Aliyev took nearly 84 percent of the vote. The poll of 40,500 voters had a margin of error of less than 1 percent.
Two other exit polls showed similar figures.
Aliyev’s campaign chief, Ali Ahmadov, quickly claimed victory, pointing at the poll results. “Ilham Aliyev has unconditional support of the population,” he said.
The main opposition candidate, historian Jamil Hasanli, had between 8 and 10 percent of the vote, followed by eight other contenders, the polls said.
Hasanli, speaking to reporters earlier in the day, said his supporters had recorded numerous vote violations.
“We have registered cases of ballot stuffing at a number of polling stations,” he said. “Regrettably, many government officials are involved in falsification, becoming accomplices of a grave crime.”
International rights groups have accused Aliyev of pressuring and harassing government critics, leaving them little breathing room to campaign. The government, however, loosened the reins ahead of the ballot, withdrawing its longtime ban on rallies in the center of the capital.
Aliyev has ruled the ex-Soviet nation of 9 million since 2003, succeeding his father, Geidar Aliyev, who had been at the helm for most of the previous three decades, first as Azerbaijan’s Communist Party boss during the Soviet times, then as its president.
The younger Aliyev has presented himself as a guarantor of stability, an image with broad appeal in a nation where painful memories are still fresh of the years of turmoil that accompanied the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. A six-year war with neighboring Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh left ethnic Armenian forces in control of Nagorno-Karabakh and neighboring areas in Azerbaijan and turned 1 million Azerbaijanis into refugees.
The Azerbaijani leader has shown little tolerance for dissent and extended his rule through elections criticized by Western observers. At the same time, he has firmly allied the Shiite Muslim nation with the West, helping to secure its energy and security interests and offset Russia’s influence in the strategic Caspian region.
Under Aliyev, Azerbaijan has basked in oil riches that have more than tripled its GDP and helped bolster his popularity. The State Oil Fund that accumulates oil revenues held $34 billion at the start of the year.
After hearing the exit poll data, hundreds of Aliyev’s supporters carrying national flags and pictures of the president took to the streets, some dancing to popular music. Motorists and bikers drove around the city, waving Azerbaijani flags and honking horns.
“We all are very happy and think that Azerbaijan in the coming five years will continue to prosper and will become the best country in the world,” said Baku resident Samira Kulieva.
__
Sophiko Megrelidze contributed to this report.
