The parliament of Azerbaijan on April 21 appointed Novruz Mamedov as the country’s new prime minister.
Mamedov has served as a foreign policy assistant to Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, since last year and previously worked as deputy head of the presidential administration.
On April, 11 to nobody’s surprise Aliyev won a landslide victory and was re-elected in a snap presidential election.
Aliyev will continue his presidency with an extended fourth term until 2025. Following the results of a referendum in 2016, he now enjoys even greater powers than before, and is poised to appoint a family member, likely his son or his wife, to succeed him.
In power since his late father passed away in 2003, Aliyev has ruled the country with an iron fist, centralising power in his hands and those of his family, ensuring that all the country's institutions come under political control, amassing a large amount of wealth, silencing critics — the use of ‘official’ online trolls and bots to harass journalists was on the eve of the election the subject of a report issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) — and promoting the country as a source of rich energy reserves externally.
Election monitors, including the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OCSE), monitored the vote that re-elected Aliyev.
The OSCE said the election lacked genuine competition and was held in an environment of curtailed rights and freedoms.
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