President Aliyev's ruling party wins Azerbaijan snap election, exit polls say

Previous elections since independence from the Soviet Union in the 1990s have not been regarded as fully free or fair.

Transcript

00:00Exit polls show that Azerbaijan's ruling party has secured a narrow victory in a snap election

00:07on Sunday. President Ilyum Aliyev's new Azerbaijan party won 68 out of 125 seats according to

00:14initial results, down from 69.

00:19Altogether, 11 political parties are represented in the parliament at the results of these

00:26elections, but these are preliminary results. And so, and all other, just 10 political parties

00:35get altogether 13 seats in the parliament. And the turnout, according to the preliminary

00:43results for the whole country, was 37.27 percent.

00:50The new Azerbaijan party has been in power since 1993. Initially led by Haidar Aliyev,

00:56the party is now under the leadership of his son. Aliyev is often accused of ruling heavy-handedly,

01:03suppressing dissent in the Central Asian country.

01:07The election comes less than a year after Azerbaijani forces reclaimed the Nagorno-Karabakh

01:12region, which had been under the control of Armenian forces since 1994. Voting was held

01:17in the region for the first time in 30 years.