Nagorno-Karabakh presidential candidate, Bako Sahakyan, has ended his pre-election campaign meetings in different regions of Karabakh. The candidate is currently in meetings in the capital city.
His regular meeting on Friday was with workers of hospitals and clinics. Presenting the propositions of his platform, Sahakyan said that the platform is mainly aimed at social issues. As always, there were many people gathered at Sahakyan’s meetings, and rumor has it that there were far fewer people gathered in other places. This is understandable because, as analysts say, all available administrative resources are being used. Unlike this candidate, there are always impediments for the meetings of the other frontrunner, Massis Mayilyan. That is why they are forced to work “secretly”, because by knowing beforehand about the meetings, some people try to lead them to failure. With these facts, and other violations, Massis Mailyan’s pre-election headquarters has filed an application to the Nagorno-Karabakh Central Election Commission. The following is stated in the document:
“We are forced to say that there have been many serious violations taking place since the launching of the campaign. If an elementary evaluation is not given, and means are not taken to prevent such events from happening again, then we will be forced to stand up and face the possibility of discrediting the most important elections for this newly independent country, which will seriously lower its international reputation and impede the further development of the country.”
The headquarters workers strongly suspect that Mailyan and his team members have been in the center of attention of the special services since day one of the campaign, and are always under their control, and that their telephone conversations are being overheard.
“After the television airtime provided to the candidates by Public Television on the first day of the campaign, Murad Petrosyan’s program was broadcasted, and it was a program which illegally campaigned in favor of candidate Bako Sahakyan and against Massis Mailyan. On this occasion, Mailyan’s pre-election headquarters appealed to the CEC, and it was accepted and informed that “the CEC had proposed to the Nagorno-Karabakh Public Television/Radio Company Council to take necessary means to prevent any future violations against the order of the pre-election campaign on the part of Public Television based on the requirements stated in the 11th article of the Nagorno-Karabakh law on “Television and Radio”. However, there have been similar violations and there has not been any evaluation given,” as stated in the application.
Counting the number of violations, it is mentioned that on June 7, inspector on security of the Martakert branch of “ArtsakhEnergo” company, Ghahramanyan, was fired by the order of director of the company, Armen Simonyan, based on his pension-receiving age, although Simonyan had hired Ghahramanyan at the same pension age, in fact, there are people who are the same age as Ghahramanyan, or even older, who are still working for the company. During a private conversation, the director had told Ghahramanyan that he did that since he supports Mailyan.
“Director of the Askeran regional department of the Union of Liberation Soldiers of Nagorno-Karabakh, Samvel Aghajanyan, gathered the voters of the Ivanovka settlement and had announced that it was authorized by the National Security Service to secure the vote only for Bako Sahakyan, which resulted complaints from the voters. The director of the Martuni subdivision of the National Security Service of Nagorno-Karabakh prepared a “compromat” against Mailyan’s trusted person (partisan election worker), G. Baghdasaryan, which was supposed to be used during Mailyan’s meeting with voters in the Tchartar village of the Martuni region. With that purpose, the critical article written years ago by journalist G. Baghdasaryan, about the problems facing the village, was printed in many copies,” as stated in the application. According to them, there is an attempt to impede the Mailyan’s meetings on the part of the Police officials and community leaders. For example, Colonel of the Police, Arkadi Mirzoyan, had tried to impede the meetings of Mailyan with the voters of the villages of Haterk and Zardakhach on July 10 and 11. The representatives of the headquarters say that after warning the Nagorno-Karabakh CEC regarding the need to check voters’ lists several times, and not receiving any response, representatives of the youth wing of the Mailyan headquarters studied the voters’ lists and revealed many imperfections, which they are once again asking the CEC to pay attention to.