Secretary of the “National Unity” NA faction Alexan Karapetyan didn’t come to yesterday’s NA briefing alone. He was with resident of the Oshakan village Spartak Yeghiazaryan. Spartak has been head of the electoral commissions at the 04/30 and 14/32 polls during the 2003 parliamentary and presidential elections, as well as during the 2005 constitutional amendments referendum presenting himself as representative of the president of Armenia. S. Yeghiazaryan had come to the National Assembly to confess to the MPs that he had committed fraud during the elections by taking votes away from Stepan Demirchyan and Artashes Geghamyan presenting himself as Robert Kocharyan He had done the same during the referendum too.
“The documents presented during both stages of the 2003 presidential elections are not right. I was the one that violated the right and that has happened throughout the Marz. It was chaos during the elections and we villagers had to make sure Robert Kocharyan got elected, but after counting the votes it turned out that Kocharyan got only 12% of the votes. In reality, Stepan Demirchyan placed first, while Artashes Geghamyan came in second. We had to give 60% of the votes to Kocharyan, whether those votes were Demirchyan’s or Geghamyan’s. We counted all of them for Kocharyan and wrote 60% for Kocharyan. The same thing happened during the second phase.”
S. Yeghiazaryan announced that he was threatened to do that, otherwise his children would be in danger.
The same thing happened during the referendum.
“We got the voters’ lists of 2 polls beforehand with the name-last names, address and passport information for each citizen. The signatures in front of the names are fake because we took the lists and forged the signatures. In reality, 60 citizens have participated in the referendum-30 voted “yes”, while 22 voted “no” and 8 were invalid. But we had presented 1649 “yes” votes beforehand,” said resident of the Oshakan village, head of the electoral commission S. Yeghiazaryan. In response to the journalists’ question as to why he is saying this years after the elections, S. Yeghiazaryan said:
“They kept scaring my children. I have two kids, one of them is currently a student. They told them that they would do this, they would to that, in other words, my kids were threatened. But today I am no longer scared and have come to the National Assembly to tell you the truth. The pressure will continue, but I have nothing to be afraid of because I finally got this burden off my shoulders and told you.”
S. Yeghiazaryan assured that the authorities had picked him to take on the responsibility because “he is the only literate one from the village and one that knows something about elections.” S. Yeghiazaryan announced yesterday that he has appealed to different courts to confess that he has committed fraud, but they have sent him back home.
“I am ready to take full responsibility for the crimes I have committed. I did it out of fear, but I just can’t live like this any longer. I have the right to live out of fear and I want to confess and get rid of this. They kept scaring me, you can’t imagine the pressure of strong people nowadays,” said Yeghiazaryan and listed the names of the people whom he had asked for help from and the replies.
“I appealed to the presidential office, the prosecutor’s office, Serge Sargsyan, to take five minutes of their time to listen to me. I got a written response from the Minister of Defense Serge Sargsyan that he was very busy and couldn’t see me. I told them what I had done. They told me to appeal to the president’s supervising service. I went there and they told me to go to the prosecutor’s office. I appeal to the prosecutor’s office and I was told to go. I have gone to different places and they all said the same thing. I’m telling you that this has gone on all over the region.”
S. Yeghiazaryan says that he is ready to list the names of the state officials that have threatened him and forced him to commit electoral fraud, starting from the presidential dome. In light of this, head of the National Assembly ARF faction Levon Mkrtchyan said:
“You can beg forgiveness for your sins at church. If the state official publicly tells about his crime after actually committing it, then he has to take his appeal to the prosecutor’s office. After that, the prosecutor’s office must institute legal proceedings and bring up a case against him. After that, we will all follow up on the events.”
In response to the question as to whether or not the results will be reviewed in case the court decides that there actually has been electoral fraud, Levon Mkrtchyan said no.