After securing the “celebrated” process of the May 12 parliamentary elections, the Armenian authorities have dedicated themselves to putting on a show of eliminating the “errors” registered during the elections and punishing the violators.
The authorities put on a show by registering 1-2 electoral violations at best and then punishing those falsifiers by law. There have been numerous publications in the presses for months, and during and after the campaign, about the hundreds and thousands of violations, however Armenian law enforcement officials have only filed 10 lawsuits. According to the Prosecutor’s office, the facts pinpointed in the other claims have not been confirmed as a result of investigation and did not correspond to reality.
Everyone knows how widespread the distribution of electoral bribes was during these past elections. In these conditions, Armenian law enforcement officials have revealed only two cases of electoral bribe distribution and have accused only three people. Two cases have been filed for tearing down campaign posters (ay, ay, ay). Of course, the lawsuits filed prove the fierce struggle of law enforcement officers against the electoral falsifiers. And, of course, there has not been a lawsuit filed for the false passports, because it is clear that an accusation had to be made against a certain top-ranking government official, as even a schoolchild knows that it was impossible to print false passports and use those for electoral falsifications without the authorities knowing it. The oppositionists are not the only ones talking about the existence of false passports. It was also recently mentioned in the interim reports of the international observers that the authorities often recall. The fact that such passports were printed is proved by the official numbers published by the Police of Armenia, according to which more than 110,000 passports were given during the past year to people who already had passports. But let’s leave this aside and get back to the illegalities registered by the law enforcement officers.
The symbolic number of lawsuits filed is enough to understand what really happened during the elections and how the results were falsified. In that sense, the lawsuit filed on the occasion of the case regarding the falsification of the results is rather interesting. The preliminary investigation of the lawsuit filed for the falsifications of results in the Ararat Marz Prosecutor’s office is over, and as a result nine members of the electoral commission of the 16th polling station located in the 15th precinct of the village of Getashen of Ararat Marz have been accused. What is unclear is why the Aragatsotn Marz Prosecutor’s office is involved in what happened in the Armavir Marz. But let’s leave this aside as well. Based on the statement on the official website of the Prosecutor General’s office, it has been clarified and established, based on the preliminary investigation, that while counting the votes of the proportional electoral system, head of the electoral commission of the 16th polling station of the 15th precinct in the village of Getashen, Armen Eloyan, put a total of 92 unused ballots (which should have been thrown away), and which were marked for a series of political parties (“Prosperous Armenia”, “Dashink”, Armenian Republican Party, the People’s Party of Armenia, the “United Labor Party” and “Legal State”) in the already voted and counted ballots. “Out of 91 ballots, the “United Labor Party” was marked on 21 ballots, “Legal State” on 20 ballots, “Dashink” party on 12 ballots, and the Armenian Republican Party on 38 ballots, and these were put in along with the already counted ballots, in accordance with the noted political parties,” as stated in the statement.
What’s interesting is that the Prosecutor’s office doesn’t mention which ballots of the political parties have been distributed among other parties in the given polling station. In any case, according to the Prosecutor’s office, while summarizing the results of the proportional electoral system vote, Eloyan has evidently miscounted the votes and dictated them to the commission secretary Gyulnarar Grigoryan, who knew that those numbers were false and went ahead and filled them out in the summary. Afterwards, Eloyan and Grigoryan, as well as the deputy head of the commission Humbert Khachatryan and commission members Vasil Yenokyan, Saro Petrosyan, Manvel Shahinyan, Magtagh Kyarimyan, David Gevorgyan, and Garik Abgaryan, have confirmed the summary of incorrect data, thus falsifying the results of the vote. Based on the proofs, all nine members of the commission have been accused based on the attributes of the 150th article of the Penal Code of Armenia. The lawsuit has been sent to the first instance court of Armavir Marz to be investigated. If the accusation is confirmed, the suspects will receive 2-5 years of imprisonment. This case is interesting in that it is registered that there have been falsifications not only in favor of the pro-government parties, but also the “Dashink”, “Legal State” and People’s Party of Armenia, which consider themselves the opposition. There are all the grounds for suspecting that the “consented falsification” of the election results based on the “let’s falsify together” principle have taken place in more polling stations, and once again there has been one case chosen from the many in order to imitate the punishment of falsifiers.
So, in reality not only have the votes “received” by the Armenian Republican Party, “Prosperous Armenia” and the ARF been drawn (decided in advance), but also the votes of all other political parties participating in the election. The difference is that the percentages of some political parties have been drawn on the account of the real votes of other parties.