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EMDS notes that there have been cases of pressure against civil society, political activists, candidates, and their relatives in both stages of the Parliamentary elections. The government failed to demonstrate any political will to release more than 100 people who are in jail with politically motivated charges as a result of increased political repression over the last few years.

EMDS's observation of the municipal elections demonstrates that the elections were held in an environment with severe restriction of political freedoms, lack of equal and authentic opportunities for competition, and widespread violations during voting and vote-counting processes. The elections were marred with the lack of alternative choices and therefore did not adhere to the requirements of the national legislation and international standards of free and fair elections and did not represent the true will of Azerbaijani public.

According to the “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections”, these elections do not meet international standards of democratic and free elections for a number of reasons: lack of equal access to state media for all candidates, lack of impartial election commissions, use of administrative resource in favor of pro-government candidates, numerous cases of coercion of voters to participate in early voting, and intransparent vote counting procedures. 

In general, local executive committees created favorable conditions for election campaigning and the number of places for holding public events increased in comparison with the elections of 2016. However, election campaigning was low key and administrative resources were widely used to promote the pro-government candidates, while non-affiliated and opposition candidates reported that their political campaigns were censored and there were cases of bans on broadcasting the campaign speeches of opposition candidates.

There are continued cases in the run up to the Parliamentary elections of candidates' registrations being revoked over alleged violations of Art. 47 and ongoing cases of bans on broadcasting the campaign speeches of opposition candidates; the DECs and the public media have demonstrated an extremely loose treatment of restrictions on campaigning activities, as established by Art. 47 of the Electoral Code, which in most cases constitutes censorship and unacceptable restrictions on freedom of expression.

The Electoral Code does not contain general or special rules regarding the conduct of the second round of local elections, except for the CEC's responsibility to ensure the conduct of the second round and the conditions for the conduct of the second round. Promo-LEX has observed that there are cases of suspicious artificial migration of voters on voter lists, a significant decrease of campaign activities ahead of the second round of elections.

The observation mission on Election Day reported that in general the opening of polling stations (PS) went smoothly on E-day. 407 incidents have been analysed by Promo-LEX, most frequently reported incidents, but not significantly numerous, were: deficiencies in voters’ lists, unjustified presence of unauthorized persons in or around the PS, presence of advertising materials within 100 m of the PS, interrupted filming during the opening of the PS and vote counting process. In general the parallel vote count did not find major discrepancies to the data provided by the CEC and the share of erroneous protocols completed by precinct election bureaus has decreased compared to the Parliamentary elections of February 24, 2019.