The polls opened today at Azerbaijan for the presidential election, where more than 6 million registered voters are set to vote, and the country’s authoritarian leader Ilham Aliyev, recently boosted by his military success in Nagorno-Karabakh, is expected to be re-elected once again, in the absence of any opposition.

In a highly symbolic gesture, the president Aliyev and his family voted in Khankendi, the main city of Nagorno-Karabakh (Stepanakert in Armenian), the Azeri presidency announced.

This is the first vote in post-Soviet history to be organized from Azerbaijan to Karabakh, where 26 polling stations opened today. It is a “historic” vote, said the chairman of the central election commission, Mazahir Panakhov, expressing his satisfaction.

THE 62-year-old Ilham Aliyevwho inherited power after his father’s death in 2003, holds the reins of this Caucasus oil country so tightly that no surprises are possible, notes AFP.

Voters have to choose between seven candidates, one of whom is Ilham Aliyev. But none of the other figures participating in the election is an alternative choice and “all the other candidates have supported the president in the recent past”, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe points out in its report Europe. Some even during the election campaign praised Aliyev, saying that “he has kept all his promises”.

According to observers cited by the German Agency, Aliyev’s six opponents are not real opponents and the real opposition, the two largest opposition parties, are boycotting this election, as they did the previous ones, calling it a “farce”. .