The participants of International seminar on "Development of election legislation in CIS countries: Improvement Pathways and Enforcement Practices” organized by the Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan and the CIS Inter-parliamentary Assembly (IPA) met with Mr. Mazahir Panahov, CEC Chairman on December 17, 2013.

After greeting the visitors, CEC Chairman spoke about a perfect legislative framework for implementing voters’ will in Azerbaijan. M.Panahov brought to the attention that the Election Code was adopted in 2003 and this legal-normative act had welcomed by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe. He also noted that the Election Code was made some amendments by the Milli Majlis and the document had been improved further. Commission Chairman who underlined that "Head of the state took steps for reinforcing legal frame in the elections field and improving the election practice further”, informed the visitors about the decrees signed by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Chairman mentioned about the activities taken by CEC in the field of formation of election legislation and the normative documents adopted by the Commission.

He also emphasized on all the innovations, as well as, application of informational-communicational achievements in elections to be the result of political will of the country leader.

The speaker who spoke about improvements applied in the latest Presidential elections informed that the number of the polling stations with web cameras had been increased to 1000, thus enabling to follow the processes going on in the polling stations with web cameras through mobile phones for the first time in the practice of Azerbaijan and the world and ramps were installed in nearly 1200 polling stations for free entry of the disabled people to the polling station with their wheelchairs.

The visitors were also informed on the works with voters’ lists, awareness-raising of election actors and other issues.

Alexey Sergeev, Secretary General of Inter-parliamentary Assembly of CIS Council thanked for friendly reception on behalf of the meeting participants and emphasized on the achievements attained by Azerbaijan which could be example to other countries for improving the election practice in recent 10 years and importance of studying practice of Azerbaijan in this field either legally or practically.

Other participants of seminar who attended the meeting also underlined the essence of spreading the experience obtained by Azerbaijan in elections field in other CIS countries.

After the meeting, a presentation was conducted at the CEC Information Center which embodied the informational-communicational improvements applied in the latest Presidential elections.