Contradicting the conclusion of one European team of monitors, the election carrying incumbent President Ilham Aliyev to a third five-year term in last week’s nationwide poll was free and fair, according to the Azerbaijani Embassy here.

Almost 4 million voters went to the polls in an election that saw Aliyev return to office in a landslide victory on the back of 10 years of rising living standards, driven by oil exports largely to Europe. About 75 percent of registered voters went to more than 5,000 polling stations across the country in perhaps Azerbaijan’s most watched election ever.

But the election has left international election monitors divided.

While the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the election was “seriously flawed,” their findings were contradicted by other international election monitoring groups, including a South Korean team and the OSCE’s own short-term observers.

“The results of the election show there is an irrefutable winner. Most of the exit polls have also confirmed it,” according to a special report by Michel Voisin, head of the OSCE short-term team. “I consider the election free, transparent and fair.”

A team of South Korean election observers from an international parliamentarian organization supported the embassy’s claim.

“Overall, (the) election environment appeared to be peaceful, orderly, transparent and nonviolent,” said Chung Eui-yong, cochairman of International Conference of Asian Political Parties, in a written statement.

“All the representatives in the mission were of the view that Azerbaijan was moving in the right direction to achieve (a) more mature democracy,” he said.

This year, South Korea will chair the first-ever Association of World Election Bodies. On Monday, about 100 nations and international organizations gathered to draft its founding charter in Incheon.

A separate joint observer mission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded that “overall, around Election Day we have observed a free, fair and transparent electoral process.”

The European Parliament agreed with that conclusion, saying that the poll was “transparent and democratic, despite continuing serious problems with freedom of speech.”

A group of former United States lawmakers who observed the vote also said it was clean and efficient. Former Congressman Michael McMahon of Staten Island in New York said the election was “honest, fair and really efficient,” according to a New York Times report.

By Philip Iglauer (ephilip2011@heraldcorp.com)