Perhaps it’s not a secret that during elections many of the opposition representatives in election commissions are “bribed” and therefore don’t pay much attention to the electoral violations.
The oppositionists themselves speak about this. The Chairman of the Democratic Party of Armenia (DPA), Deputy of the NA “Justice” faction, Aram G. Sargsyan also agrees with this viewpoint. So what is the opposition doing to make sure that its representatives in election commissions are not “bribed” during the coming elections? By answering this question in Pastark Club, Sargsyan mentioned, “this is a very complicated issue and we cannot just ignore this. This means that if people are not offended when someone tells them to sing to get a TV, then I can understand what kind of state those people are in. It’s not the people, who are guilty. The culprits are the ones, who bring these people to that situation.” But these people are representatives of the opposition. Can’t the opposition change the situation? According to Sargsyan, the idea of principality is a good thing but the problem is that very often people cannot restrain their temptation to receive a “sack of potatoes”. According to the chair of the DPA it’s not allowed to bring people to such a state and then demand a moral approach from them. OK, so what does the opposition do to keep its members away from being “bribed”? “We are constantly trying to figure out who can be trusted and who not. That’s all we can do. But unfortunately I’m not able to be responsible for 100% positive outcome in such conditions,” stated Sargsyan and added, “in that case what will these people do? Who are they going to expect help from to take care of their family needs and get some seeds to plant in the event when the state doesn’t support them?” Can’t the opposition appoint its loyalists in the commissions? “We can. We are trying. But it’s very hard to do it especially in rural communities,” he says. It’s very strange that the opposition doesn’t have about 2000 loyalists (there are about 1850 precincts in Armenia) to work within commissions without being bribed. In that case what is the opposition hoping for to achieve its goals (for example, Sargsyan mentioned that his party is planning to occupy at least third place in the coming elections)? By answering this question the DPA chairperson mentioned that he’d never said that they don’t have sufficient number of loyalists and added that at present we should worry about the situation that people are in, as a result of which they get bribed for a “sack of potatoes”. “I don’t think that it’s the 2000 people, who are going to solve the electoral process. Believe me, we’ve had a great deal of principled members in many precincts. But was the problem for the authorities to come up with any turnout they wished?” added Sargsyan. According to the latter the opposition has only three representatives in the election commissions, who don’t sign, struggle and do their best. But the 6 remaining members are government representatives and form a majority; they sign and pass any protocol.
However, if these oppositionists don’t change anything it becomes very strange when the government spends money on “bribing” them. Nevertheless the DPA chair also told us that they had raised the issue of equaling the number of opposition and government representatives in the commissions, however the authorities didn’t agree. “Do you think we have sufficient number of uncorrupt people? Of course, we do. If we are at a level, when we don’t have that many honest people then we cannot be considered a nation. Is that what you referring to?,” asks Sargsyan. Of course we didn’t want to say that. We just wanted to know what the opposition was hoping for in the conditions when it’s not able to find at least 2000 uncorrupt members. And as you see we haven’t received an answer to this question. “Instead of criticizing those, who create that situation you are focusing on whether we have 2000 loyalists. Let’s say we have. But what can we do under such regime? Can we solve any issues? No. We make speeches and criticize them. But they don’t care. They continue their illegal acts,” wrapped up Sargsyan.