Voters in Azerbaijan have overwhelmingly supported scrapping presidential term limits, the country’s top election official said Thursday.
Opponents of President Ilham Aliyev boycotted Wednesday’s constitutional referendum, calling it a new setback for democracy in the firmly controlled nation. Abandoning term limits will allow the 47-year-old president to seek to stay indefinitely as leader of the oil-rich nation if he chooses.
With ballots from more than half the polling places counted, 92 percent of voters supported abandoning the current limit of two consecutive five-year presidential terms, Central Election Commission chairman Mazahir Panakhov said, AP reports.
The Aliyevs have dominated the tightly controlled former Soviet state for decades, first under the late Heidar Aliyev as Communist leader and president, then under his son Ilham since 2003.
