Azerbaijan ruling party take parliamentary majority

The Central Election Committee in Azerbaijan says the ruling New Azerbaijan Party took more than sixty-two percent of the popular vote in the recent parliamentary elections.

A senior commission official said that with most of the vote counted, President Heydar Aliyev's party will have seventeen of the twenty-five seats to be filled from those on the party's candidate-lists.

Final results about the additional one-hundred candidates elected from the list of individual candidates or single mandate constituencies are to be announced in ten days.

Three opposition parties, including the ruling party's main challenger, Musavat, failed to cross the six percent threshold entitling them to a seat.

International observers strongly criticised the elections saying there were widespread irregularities.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service