10 ATAKISHI v. AZERBAIJAN JUDGMENT 45. The other part of the evidence presented by the ConEC consisted of written complaints by M.I. and a group of YAP members (see paragraphs 12-13 above) accusing the applicant of being responsible for disrupting M.I.’s meeting with voters on 28 October 2005. The Court notes that these accusations emanated from the applicant’s main opponent in the election and his political supporters and, therefore, called for exceptional scrutiny by the courts charged with the task of assessing their truthfulness. However, none of the authors of these complaints was summoned and heard by the courts. Moreover, as the applicant was accused of disrupting M.I.’s campaign meeting in an unlawful manner, it is reasonable to assume that a large number of participants in that meeting and other persons would have witnessed the alleged incident. However, the courts failed to identify and seek to hear any witnesses of the alleged incident in order to verify the statements of M.I. and the YAP members and to determine whether the applicant’s alleged actions indeed qualified as a breach of the relevant provisions of the Electoral Code. 46. Furthermore, as regards the legal basis for the applicant’s disqualification on the second ground, the Court notes that the domestic courts relied on Articles 88.1 and 88.2 of the Electoral Code. However, they failed to provide any legal reasoning for their decision to class the alleged misconduct by the applicant as falling within the ambit of those provisions. In particular, the Court notes that, while all the complainants accused the applicant either of “insulting” his opponents or disrupting M.I.’s meeting, the Court finds it difficult to understand how such actions, even if they had taken place, could be considered an “abuse of the right to campaign in the media by inciting social, racial, ethnic or religious hatred and hostility”, as prohibited by Article 88.2 of the Electoral Code. While it is not the Court’s task to substitute itself for the national courts in matters of interpretation of the domestic law, it nevertheless observes that Article 88.2 of the Electoral Code, if read literally, appears to be irrelevant to the types of misconduct that the applicant was accused of. In such circumstances, the Court considers that the failure by the domestic courts to provide any legal reasons for application of the above-mentioned provisions of the Electoral Code contributed to the apparent arbitrariness of their decisions. 47. For the reasons outlined above, the Court considers that the applicant’s disqualification was based on irrelevant, insufficient and inadequately examined evidence and that the domestic decisions lacked sufficient legal reasoning. 48. Furthermore, the Court notes that the applicant was not afforded sufficient procedural safeguards against arbitrariness. In particular, the ConEC did not inform the applicant about its hearing of 29 October 2005, thus depriving him of the opportunity to defend his position before the ConEC, and it took the decision to request his disqualification without hearing the complainants or otherwise attempting to carry out a