Three months after the constitutional amendments referendum, the opposition has come up with evidence proving the fraud going on during the referendum and has come to the conclusion that it is much harder to fake a referendum rather than having fair elections. According to the speech made by the “Justice” alliance representative for the Central Electoral Commission Felix Khachatryan during a press conference held yesterday, you need to have a lot of brains to go with fraud rather than conducting fair elections. According to the opposition, the authorities don’t even have the brains.
“The authorities couldn’t possibly be satisfied with just using their brains and ingenuity; that is why we have the facts in front of us. You can see how much fraud there is just by looking at one fact,” said F. Khachatryan.
He had brought a document with him where there was a list of facts. He assured that it would be hard for the authorities to trick the people and not be brought to justice this time.
Deputy of the “Justice” alliance Grigor Harutyunyan said that their alliance is not going to send the facts to the prosecutor’s office and claimed that sending the facts was enough for them to do some research and punish the authority figures involved in fraud.
“We are making the prosecutors’ job easier by not forcing them to punish someone who had voted on behalf of his brother,” he said and added: “there is no expiration date for these kinds of crimes.”
Before getting to the violations, let’s not forget to mention that the opposition members were complaining that it had been difficult for them to obtain the facts due to the fact that they had been persecuted and threatened by the authorities. F. Khachatryan announced:
“Do you think it is easy for the opposition to come up with these facts? The members of the Central Electoral Commission had warned not to give Felix Khachatryan any evidence.”
10,000 extra ballots in circulation
On November 29, president of the CEC and six members signed a document stating that they had received 2 million 344 thousand 300 ballots. However, the documents stating the number of ballots given to each electoral committee is registered to be 2 million 334 thousand 300 ballots.
“This means 10,000 ballots less. Basically, it is possible to circulate 10,000 ballots in a matter of three-four days and get 5 million ballots and reach the goal,” said F. Khachatryan and added: “I have the evidence.”
He also had some stamped envelopes where the ballots had been sent to the electoral committees. F. Khachatryan showed how he had taken out the ballots without causing any harm to the sealed envelope.
“All envelopes were opened from the bottom part and they were left untouchable. This gave the polls a chance to open the envelopes beforehand, use them and put them back. That is how they used the 10,000 extra ballots. I didn’t come up with that; CEC member Abrahamyan reminded me of that and I refused to sign under the document,” said the “Alliance” representative.
Handing them out with the “as much as you want” principle
According to F. Khachatryan, the electoral committees were the ones that circulated the “fake” 10,000 ballots. According to one of the requirements of the “Law about Referendums”, the number of ballots that each electoral committee can receive is 3% more than the number of ballots that they receive in total. However, according to the studies, the ballots were given based on how “active” or how “slow” committees were.
“Each committee got as much as it wanted,” said F. Khachatryan and listed those committees. For example, 1790 “fake” ballots were given to the 7/21 poll station in Malatia-Sebastia community when there were only 1934 voters. As for the poll next to that one-7/22-1890 fake ballots for 1644 voters.
“In the first case we have 200 ballots less and in the other 200 more. Some guy from this committee probably said that he could fake more and asked them to give him more ballots. Nobody knows why, according to which law or what subtext,” says F. Khachatryan.
There are many cases. In the Shengavit community, 1900 ballots were given to the 1508 voters registered to vote at the 11/33 poll. As for the Aragatsotn Marz, 1030 fake ballots were handed out to the 751 registered voters at the 14/26 poll.
Getting to Aragotsotn through Armavir
A clause was constituted according to which the elections, better yet, the ballots were to be followed up on by numbering them. The ballots were being numbered before making it to the polls. During the referendum, that law was violated.
“The number of given and returned ballots at the #3 poll are less by 5464. Who can explain what happened? That is why we say let’s open up the ballots and see if the ballot of the voter corresponds or it has been transferred to other polls. We are just trying to prove the violations. The check-ups have to be done by the authorities,” said F. Khachatryan.
“The same numbered ballots can be found in other polls. There are two explanations to this: either two of the same ballots were printed, or a poll has transferred its ballots to another poll by misunderstanding or by receiving an order to do so,” says G. Harutyunyan.
F. Khachatryan showed the records of #20 poll in Armavir. For some reason, the numbered ballots given to this poll were the same in the 14/67 poll located in the village of Tsaghkahovit in the Aragatsotn Marz. As a matter of fact, according to the summary prepared by the CEC, there were 1585 uncertain ballots after the referendum. While studying the records presented by opposition members, the CEC found out that there were 4225 uncertainties in only 4 polls (11/32, 16/34, 11/31, 9/21) out of the 1922.
Votes being registered at 8 p.m.
One of the interesting things is that 28 polls had finished registering votes at 8 p.m., something which according to the facts that the opposition has, was common all around. This means that the polls were doing this just when the doors were about to close. Forty to fifty other polls were doing this until 8:30 p.m. More than 150 polls were registering votes until 9:00 p.m. Even the polls that had 1500 participants managed to summarize and register their votes at 9:00 p.m.
“Meanwhile, at the 36/37 poll in the Dzorakap village of Artik, where only one person has participated in the referendum, the committee came up with results at 8:15 p.m. Basically, they needed 15 minutes to come up with the summary of the vote made by one person,” said F. Khachatryan and asked the following question.
“If I call you 10 minutes after a press conference and tell you that I am at the “Cosmos” hotel in Moscow, will you believe me?-no, right? That is theoretically impossible.”
According to opposition members, what happened in Artashat was even more humiliating.
“It seems as though each committee was racing against each other to see which committee will hand in the results to the CEC first. At 12:00 a.m. in Artashat, 44 polls had signed the documents stating the results and handed them in to the CEC.”
“Dirty work”-2
Aram G. Sargsyan stated that during the spring session of the National Assembly, the “Justice” alliance will once again propose forming a temporary council for studying the results of the constitutional amendments referendum.
“We will discuss applying that law and I would like to see the faces of the MPs who refuse to form this council knowing very well about all the falsifications. It is obvious that most of the authority figures are the ones responsible for what happened, even if they haven’t participated in all this,” said A. Sargsyan.
During the European Council session to take place on January 23 and during which Stepan Demirchyan will participate in for the first time, the European Council will make a speech about the constitutional amendments referendum as part of the agenda. A. G. Sargsyan said that Stepan Demirchyan will not make his own speech regarding the referendum.
“We don’t need that. Europe will once again see the “dirty work” not because of our fault, but rather because of the authorities and their followers. After all, they are the ones responsible for all this, not Europe,” he said.
Grigor Harutyunyan said that Robert Kocharyan and the coalition are the ones responsible for the fraud that went on during the referendum, not Europe. That is why they will not have Stepan Demirchyan talk about this during the European Council session.
“This is planned out by the authorities. Nobody should play the laughing boy and say that he didn’t know or he wasn’t informed…They don’t know anything. This was done by the order of Robert Kocharyan so that he could then say to the coalition-this is what you are made of. They came up with the 1.5 million on purpose so that the coalition could feel responsible. Let’s get together as one and see what really happened, instead of just talking,” said G. Harutyunyan.