Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
MOSCOW (AP) — Voters in Azerbaijan were choosing a new parliament Sunday in an early election after a short and low-key campaign.
President Ilham Aliev, in power since 2003, called the election in early December after the parliament appealed to be dissolved in order to elect a new body that could work more closely with the president on reforms in the oil-rich country.
Aliev's New Azerbaijan Party held 65 of the 125 seats in the old parliament, short of the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution.
Nineteen political parties have fielded candidates but most of the more than 1,600 people running are self-nominated, according to the election observation mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The official campaigning period began just three weeks ago in the former Soviet republic of 10 million people on the Caspian Sea.
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
