Azerbaijan, Baku, 25 July / corr. Trend E.Babayev / A surprising 78.6% of the Azerbaijani voters state their unawareness about the presence of Internet sites (www.cec.gov.az , www.infocenter.gov.az) ofthe Central Elections Commission (CEC), as the opinion poll held by ELS Independent Investigation Centre revealed.
The opinion poll was conducted in Baku and Sumgayit in 2007 and 2008 and a total of 2,200 respondents were questioned during this time.
Irada Yagubova, the head of the ELS Independent Investigation Centre, stressed that only 4.7% of respondents entered the CEC's website. A total of 14.3% people, who participated in this opinion poll, noted the absence of WAP version at the CEC's websites, as they connect the Internet through mobile phone.
According to Yagubova, monitoring was held into the CEC's websites. She said that there was too little information about the presidential election of 2003, as well as, about the coming presidential elections in the websites. She made a lot of offers to improve the CEC's websites. One of these proposals is the establishment WAP version to connect the CEC's websites through mobile phones.
The results of this opinion poll cannot be assessed as unbiased, Rovzat Gasimov, the chief secretariat of the CEC on international relations, told Trend on 25 July. He said that the CEC began enlightenment work on the coming elections a while ago. There is information about the CEC's websites at the advertisements, prepared for the CEC and aired on the TV channels. "Therefore, the statement, which urges that majority of people are unaware about CEC's websites, is not serious," Gasimov said, noting the presence of all rules and instructions of the elections at the websites of the CEC.
Concerning the WAP version of the websites Gasimov said that it was a difficult issue. "We thought of creating a WAP version. However, you cannot write 'ə' letter of the Azerbaijani alphabet in mobile phones. From this point of view, for example, person, whose name is Ali (Əli) cannot enter the website www.infocenter.gov.az and find his name there. Therefore, we delayed this issue temporally," Gasimov said.