The well-known Freedom house international law defense organization expressed negative opinions on democracy in Armenia in its recent report.
“After the declaration of independence, all state elections in Armenia have been based on electoral fraud. The OSCE and European Council observers have observed serious violations during the last Armenian presidential and parliamentary elections. They have officially announced that the elections didn’t correspond to Western standards. This proves that the opposition was right when it said that the elections were based on fraud,” as stated in the report.
The Freedom house analysts had this to say about Armenia’s constitutional amendments referendum last year:
“The scandalous constitutional amendments referendum on November 27, 2005 proved that there is some kind of electoral fraud culture in Armenia. The European Council observers suspected the official results of the referendum. The low level of participation didn’t correspond to the high number of ballots counted by the electoral commissions. The Armenian opposition, which boycotted the referendum, claims that only 16% of registered voters took part in the referendum,” says Freedom house.
The organization also claims that the one-sided governance of Armenia stands in the way of Armenia’s democratization, especially the large amount of power granted to the president.
“Based on the constitutional amendments, some of that power goes to the government and the parliament respectively. For example, based on those amendments, the president will no longer have the right to remove the Prime Minister and disband the parliament as he wishes. The U.S., the European Union and the European Council have approved these amendments, but the Armenian opposition doesn’t consider them satisfactory and claims that the authorities must first respect the current laws. Despite the constitutional amendments, the president will continue to be the strongest state official of the country.”
As for freedom of press, the authors of the report say:
“Armenian presses aren’t working in a peaceful environment. The authorities keep controlling the state-owned public television and private television networks belonging to president Kocharyan’s loyal businessmen. Television networks rarely broadcast any information aimed against the government and it’s obvious that the reporters work under censure.”