On September 5, the members of the Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA) met with the officials of Council of Europe Azerbaijan office.
The head of the ACSDA EH Maharram Zulfugarli gave broad information about ACSDA’s activity on the sphere of civil society development, and the works realized by EH. He also talked about expansion their cooperation with local offices of several international organizations including OSCE, IFES, US International Republicans Institute, US Counterpart Organization and Eurasia Cooperation Foundation. He stated that they intend to expand relations with CE Baku office too. Zulfugarli informed the CE officials about the election enlightenment, monitoring of the elections, exit poll and quick count operations to be realized by the ACSDA EH. M. Zulfugarli stated that the Association held trainings for election observers in Ismayilli, Goychay, Gakh, Gabala, Shirvan, Saatli, Salyan, Khachnaz, Guba, Goychay, Mingachevir and Ganja from August 15 through September 2. He also informed the attendees of the distribution of “The Monitoring of Presidential Elections – 2008 Memory Booklet” among observers. Besides, ACSDA plans to hold exit-poll and quick-count on Election Day.
Elvin Mammadov, the assistant on election of CE Azerbaijan office, gave information about measures taken related to the forthcoming presidential elections. According to him, a delegation consisting of 5 officials from Council of Europe is expected to come to Azerbaijan on September 15. Besides, a watchdog group including 30 observers will visit Azerbaijan on the eve of the presidential elections.
At the end of the event the parties came to an agreement on organizing meeting of ACSDA representatives and CE officials who will come to Azerbaijan. ACSDA also sent a letter to CE Secretary General’s special envoy Veronica Cotec concerning the matter.