The son of Azerbaijan's ailing leader Haydar Aliyev was all but declared president yesterday, securing a runaway lead in an election to seal a dynastic succession on pledges of stability for his people and investors.
Ilham Aliyev has vowed to pursue the policies of his father, the dominant force in the ex-Soviet state since the 1960s and viewed by Western companies as the figure who preserved order and opened doors to investors hungry to tap crude oil and gas riches.
Election officials said with almost 85 percent of all votes counted, 79.52 percent of Azerbaijan's eight million people voted for Aliyev junior. His closest rival, opposition standardbearer, Isa Gambar, was on almost 12 percent.
A victory for Ilham, with his father still undergoing treatment in a US hospital, would further entrench the Aliyev family in power. Ilham became prime minister in August at Aliyev senior's behest and other relatives occupy key positions.
It would also reassure investors keen to ensure calm in a country jolted by turbulent politics and bloodshed at the end of the Soviet era and in the aftermath of the fall of communism.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a daily briefing: "Indications are that the voting has gone smoothly, with no reports of violence." But he said the US regretted that Azerbaijani non-governmental groups receiving foreign assistance were unable to observe the voting.
Despite criticism of voting conduct from some Western observers, both Ilham's and Gambar's supporters were quick to declare victory after voting closed on Wednesday.
But celebrations outside the opposition headquarters turned sour when hundreds of supporters scuffled briefly with riot police outside the opposition's headquarters. Some protesters were clubbed to the ground, but the crowd dispersed later in the night.
In the early hours, Gambar, who had said he had won Wednesday's election with 60 percent support, agreed with police to leave his headquarters where he had barricaded himself with advisers.
Ali Akhmedov, Ilham's executive party secretary, said Ilham's victory was one also for his father, who voted in the Cleveland hospital where he is being treated for heart and kidney problems.
"This is the success of Haydar Aliyev's policies," he said.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
RSS