Venice Commission surprised by Ali Ahmadov's statement

"We have an agreement with the Azerbaijani authorities regarding the Electoral Code. We have discussed this issue with Sefa Mirzayev and Shahin Aliyev in Strasbourg on 5 April. Besides, we received an official letter from Ramiz Mehdiyev in May. The Azerbaijani side agreed to make changes into the Electoral Code and considered it advisable to cooperate with us regarding this issue. Since the general issue is the Electoral Code, making some changes to the composition of election commissions is inevitable. It is true that the Council of Europe was satisfied with the conduct of the 13 May re-run of the parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan. However, the Ad-Hoc Committee strongly criticized the November 6, 2005 main parliamentary elections. This shows that we have to implement some measures together with the Azerbaijani authorities by next elections," the VC official said, APA reports.