SAMADBAYLI AND OTHERS v. AZERBAIJAN JUDGMENT 5 Protocol No. 1 to the Convention and that no separate examination is necessary under Article 13. Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 reads: “The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.” A. Admissibility 22. The Court notes that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention. It further notes that it is not inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible. B. Merits 1. The parties’ submissions 23. The submissions made by the applicants and the Government were similar to those made by the relevant parties in respect of the similar complaint raised in the case of Gahramanli and Others (cited above, §§ 58-65). 2. The Court’s assessment 24. Having considered the facts of the present case and in view of their clear similarity to the facts in the Gahramanli and Others on all relevant and crucial points, the Court sees no particular circumstances that could persuade it to deviate from its findings in that judgment, and finds that in the present case each applicant’s right to stand as a candidate was breached for the same reasons as those provided in that judgment, namely that the applicants’ complaints concerning election irregularities were not effectively addressed at domestic level (see Gahramanli and Others, cited above, §§ 71-88). 25. There has accordingly been a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. IV. ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 14 OF THE CONVENTION 26. In conjunction with the above complaint, the applicants in applications nos. 37866/11 and 42360/11 also complained that opposition-oriented candidates, like themselves, had been discriminated against by various means by all the State executive authorities, electoral commissions, courts and Government-controlled media throughout the entire electoral process. They relied on Article 14 of the Convention, which provides: