Azerbaijan’s authoritarian president Ilam Aliyev, in power for two decades, bolstered by his army’s takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, was re-elected to office Wednesday, as expected, for a fifth term with more than 90 percent of the vote, official results showed. .

Mr. Aliyev, 62, heir to power after his father’s death in 2003, received 92 percent of the vote in the vote, from which the opposition was absent, according to the near-final count.

“The people of Azerbaijan have elected Ilam Aliyev as the president of the country,” summarized the head of the Central Election Commission, clarifying that the turnout was 67.7%.

Thousands of supporters of the head of state celebrated his victory last night in the streets of the capital Baku.

Typically, voters were asked to choose between seven candidates, including the head of state. In fact, of his six opponents, none offered a real alternative and all of them “had supported him in the recent past”, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) pointed out.

Some even praised Mr. Aliyev during the election campaign, who “kept all his promises.”

The opposition parties, exhausted after years of repression, abstained and described the process as a “farce”, just like in the previous elections, in 2018.

Ilam Aliyev rode the wave of excitement over his army’s military victory over Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, which ended three decades of conflict and two wars.

The Baku strongman was thus able to boast that he had achieved the “reunification” of the country, a goal he had set himself.

Symbolically, the president and his family cast their ballots in a ballot box in Khankendi, the main city of Nagorno-Karabakh — Stepanakert, for Armenians.

Polling stations were operating in the enclave as part of an election in Azerbaijan for the first time since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the head of the election commission said, calling the election “historic” for that reason.

Ilam Aliyev is collecting overwhelming electoral victories: in 2018 he secured around 86% of the votes, in 2008 almost 89%. These votes were denounced by international observers, with the OSCE speaking in 2018 of “serious irregularities”.

The former Soviet republic of about ten million inhabitants ranks last in the rankings of human rights organizations. For example, the American democracy promotion organization Freedom House describes the situation in Azerbaijan as “poor” in terms of civil liberties.

Other NGOs complain of repression of the opposition, torture in prisons, arbitrary arrests and so on, accusations that Baku rejects.

In recent months, some ten journalists have been arrested in court cases that their defenders say were completely fabricated.

Ilam Aliyev has also been accused of personal enrichment through the embezzlement of the country’s hydrocarbon export revenues, which he denies.

He has named his wife Mehriban Alieva as vice president. The couple’s son is considered by many to be a possible successor in the future.