BAKU -- Azerbaijan's incumbent strongman, President Ilham Aliyev, appears to have won a fifth consecutive term in office based on preliminary results of a snap election he called following Baku's swift and decisive victory over ethnic Armenian separatists in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Mazahir Phanahov, chairman of the Central Election Commission, said data from 54 percent of the country's 6,537 polling stations show Aliyev with 92.1 percent of the vote. His closest rival, Zahid Oruj, is far behind with just 2.2 percent. None of the other five candidates received more than 2 percent, according to the partial count.
Watchdogs have criticized the vote as neither free nor fair amid a crackdown on independent media and the absence of any real opposition.
The parties in Azerbaijan that offer a genuine opposition to Aliyev -- who has exercised authoritarian control over the country since assuming power from his father, Heydar, in 2003 -- all boycotted the race, ceding the field to six ersatz challengers.
A presidential election had not been scheduled to take place until 2025, but Aliyev, bolstered by Baku's recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh, announced the early vote in December to take advantage of the battlefield victory.
"I don't believe that we will see a different Aliyev in the new term," Berit Lindeman, secretary-general of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, told RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service.
"I think the reason why the elections were organized now instead of next year is exactly that he wants to proceed and continue the path that he's already on. It is a further step to cement his power and the way he is running it now. I mean, he's been becoming gradually more authoritarian."
The 62-year-old Aliyev has stayed in power through a series of elections marred by irregularities and accusations of fraud. Under his authoritarian rule, political activity and human rights have been stifled.
He called the snap election just months after Azerbaijani forces retook the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region in a blitz offensive in September from ethnic Armenian forces who had controlled it for three decades.
As of 5 p.m. local time, 4,590,075 people -- 70.85 percent of registered voters -- had cast their ballot, according to Farid Orujov, the head of the Election Information Center of the Secretariat of the Central Election Commission.
Stephan Schennach, an Austrian delegation member to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which was not invited to observe the election, said Aliyev appeared to be using the victory in Nagorno-Karabakh as a springboard to victory, but warned he may find the going tough as the breakaway region is brought back under Azerbaijani control.
"I think Azerbaijan has now a lot of problems to reconstruct the infrastructure in the former occupied territories," told RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service.
Aliyev and members of his family voted in Karabakh's capital, Xankandi (which Armenians call Stepanakert), in an apparent move to emphasize the country's main achievement under his rule.
As Aliyev's popularity shot up dramatically following Azerbaijan's victory in Karabakh, a crackdown on independent media and democratic institutions intensified in the country.
Several independent Azerbaijani journalists were incarcerated after Baku took over Karabakh on various charges that the journalists and their supporters have called trumped up and politically motivated.