Azerbaijan is set to hold snap leadership elections on Wednesday, with incumbent President Ilham Aliyev among six other candidates competing for a seven-year term.
Some 6.5 million eligible voters in Azerbaijan and overseas are to cast their ballots at a total of 6,537 polling stations set up at home and Azerbaijani Embassies worldwide, the Azerbaijani Central Election Commission has informed.
Voting will start at 8 a.m. and end at 7 p.m. local time, the commission said.
It also said that 790 international observers, representing 72 international organizations from 89 countries, have been accredited to monitor the election process alongside 90,000 local observers.
Nearly 200 foreign journalists will join the local press to cover the polls.
Aliyev, who has been in power since 2003 as his country’s fourth president, is running for the ruling New Azerbaijan Party.
He called for the snap election in December last year, which was originally scheduled for 2025.
Aliyev has six challengers, including the main opposition leader, Razi Nurullayev, the head of the National Front Party, who is rerunning after losing to Aliyev in the 2018 elections, as well as Fazil Mustafa of the Great Order Party, Elşad Musayev of the Great Azerbaijan Party, Kudret Hasanguliyev of the Whole Azerbaijan Popular Front Party and independent runners Zahid Oruç and Fuat Aliyev.
The presidential vote is also notable for being the first that will be held in Azerbaijani territories, primarily Karabakh and adjacent regions, liberated from illegal Armenian occupation after 30 years.
More than 22,000 voters will vote in Shusha, the symbol city of Karabakh, in Khankendi, which was once used as the "capital" by the separatist Armenian administration, and in Khojaly, Khojavand, Agdere, Aghdam, Jabrayil, Fuzuli and Zangilan, as well as in Gubadli, Lachin and Kalbajar.
Also, three organizations applied to conduct an "exit poll" in the elections, one of them is the Oracle Advisory Group organization from the U.S., the election commission said.
Azerbaijan liberated most of Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but occupied by Armenia since 1991, during a 44-day war in the fall of 2020, which ended with a Russian-brokered peace agreement.
Last September, the Azerbaijani army initiated a counterterrorism operation in Karabakh to establish constitutional order, after which illegal separatist forces in the region surrendered.
