They monitored the elections in a lot of communities of Yerevan and in several cities and villages of Armavir, Lori, Tavush regions of Armenia. Yesterday the members of the delagation organized an interview with the purpose to inform about the results of their observation. According to these observers the ”local government elections corresponded to European standards”. ”The election procedures were organized well”,- said the head of the delegation, Irish Shon O’Brian. He thanked the minister of the RA regional administration Hovik Abrahamyan, the Central Electoral Comission and precinct electoral comissions for supporting their observations. The head of the delegation noted that the elections were better than in 2002 and said that this was connected with the fact of training commission members. Anyway, according to the observers there had been ”minor” violations. They mentioned that generally the elections were organized as a means of competition, but there were communities which had only one candidate. The observers didn’t know about the incident in Nor-Hachn and couldn’t say anything about that. The observers had heard about the situation in Echmiadzin, but one of them said: ”We can’t say anything about that situation, because we can’t speak about things which we haven’t seen”. Anyway, saying that the elections were organized in compliance with the EU standards, when answering to journalists’ questions it seemed that they wanted to justify their evaluations by saying that they had made only short-term observation in Armenia. ”There was serious competition in Vanadzor. And when the powers differ much, people say similar things. It is like that in our country too”,-said Lloyd Williams. In respone to our question as to whether they considered the reconstruction, asphalting and other activities of some candidates as electoral bribe, Shon O’Brian said: ”For example, if the voters ask me to find solutions, I will try to help them, and if I do it, I will honestly say that it was my job and it was done due to my efforts. And I will be very happy if people vote for me because I have done that kind of work”. Answering to our question about what kind of penalties or punishments was the EU going to make if the upcoming referendum didn’t comply with European standards, the head of the delegation said: ”we don’t discuss anything about penalties, because we don’t have those kinds of standards and leverages”,-said the head of the delegation and added that the situation as a whole was getting better.
