KERIMOVA v. AZERBAIJAN JUDGMENT 13 failure to abide by statutorily-prescribed safeguards of the integrity of the electoral process. 51. Furthermore, having regard to the CEC decision of 8 November 2005, the Court notes that the CEC first invalidated the election results in sixteen polling stations owing to the alleged irregularities, and then proceeded to rely on Article 170.2.2 of the Electoral Code in order to invalidate the election results in the entire constituency based on the fact that the elections in two-fifths of the total number of polling stations representing more than one-quarter of the constituency electorate had been annulled. However, the Court finds it troubling that, upon invalidating the elections both in the relevant polling stations and in the entire constituency, the CEC ignored the requirements of Article 114.5 of the Electoral Code, which prohibited invalidation of election results at any level on the basis of a finding of irregularities committed for the benefit of candidates who lost the election (see paragraph 27 above). This rule protected the opinion of the electorate, as well as the interests of a candidate who received the highest number of votes and who was not responsible for any irregularities, from any unlawful actions attempted against such winning candidate. As such, this rule was aimed at preventing a situation where a winning candidate is wrongfully punished by being deprived of his or her victory in the election for malfeasance attributable to his or her losing opponents. In this connection, the Court notes that the situation envisaged in Article 114.5 of the Electoral Code is the direct opposite of a situation where irregularities are found to have been allegedly made to the benefit of the “winning” candidate (contrast Namat Aliyev, cited above, §§ 9-18, 64, 67 and 74). However, the Court observes that, despite the expressly stated requirement of Article 114.5 of the Electoral Code, neither the CEC, at the time of making its decision to annul the election, nor the domestic courts dealing with the appeals against its decision, made an attempt to determine in whose favour the alleged irregularities had been made. In any event, the subsequent criminal proceedings at the Sumgayit City Court established that all the illegal alterations to the PEC protocols had been made exclusively for the benefit of the applicant's opponents. Finally, as noted above, even despite these illegal alterations, the applicant still emerged as the candidate with the largest number of votes and it has never even been suggested by any of the domestic authorities that she could be responsible for any of the irregularities in question. In such circumstances, it is all but apparent that the decision to invalidate the election results in the applicant's constituency, and thus deprive her of the parliamentary seat, not only lacked any relevant substantiation but was also made in breach of the requirement of Article 114.5 of the Electoral Code. At the very least, the failure to take this requirement into account, and the lack of any explanation for such failure, contributed to the appearance of arbitrariness of the annulment of the election.