The situation in Armenia is extraordinary nowadays prior to parliamentary elections due on May 6. Three structures have been formed to ensure control over electoral process: non-parliamentary joint headquarter, parliamentary monitoring team and a team of several parties who have joint RPA representative Davit Harutyunyan’s initiative to ensure civil elections.
These three institutions regularly hold meetings and discussions. For example, yesterday these institutions should have organized their meetings. However, the non-parliamentary headquarter did not manage to hold its meeting as the territory of Political Scientists’ Union, where its meetings were usually conducted, no longer belongs to the Union. Yesterday the participants of D. Harutyunyan’s initiative, that is RPA, PAP, Legal State party, ARF, Communist Party and Democratic Party conducted a meeting at the CEC. Two of these parties, ARF and PAP, participate in the activities of these three structures. According to D. Harutyunyan, yesterday voter lists were the matter of discussion. They wanted to know the reasons for voter numbers increase in comparison to previous elections. By the way, they are going to meet today as well. Yesterday members of parliamentary monitoring team under Samvel Nikoyan, President of the RA National Assembly, had a meeting at the NA. Here as well a number of issues were discussed such as recording the voting of a certain voter by cell phone, organizing political campaigns in schools and putting oxidizing stamps in passports. PAP faction member Naira Zohrabyan announced that numerous voters had shared their concerns in regards to the elections. Mainly, in several villages the population is demanded to take the picture of the ballot or even take it out and show it to the majors of the villages in order to make sure they have fulfilled their promise and to receive the bribe. The deputy demanded that prior to May 6 the chairman of CEC and head of the police should come up with statements and announce that these actions are criminally persecuted. According to Samvel Nikoyan, correspondent agreements have been reached and prior to elections chairman of CEC and head of the RA police department will come up with correspondent interviews. This agreement has been reached in a result of meetings initiated by D. Harutyunyan yesterday. According to Zohrabyan, those officials who demanded to take the picture of the ballot by cell phone were not from PAP. Thus, she implied that these majors could be RPA members as majors of more than 600 communities are from RPA.
The method of taking electoral bribe and making a photo of the voted ballot for the purpose of showing to the bribers later is no news and has been used during the past elections as well. Now community heads and activists are preparing for this purpose and are collecting passport details and verbal promise to vote for their parties. Later, on election day, the organizers bus voters to polling stations and demand to photo their voted ballots in order to receive the money from them. Such electoral violations are taking place in a well-organized fashion and in agreement between parties and voters. This topic is discussed everywhere and during all gatherings, and voters feel free to speak about it and they are never shame to say that they have taken bribe. Even more, there are voters who expect offers of electoral bribe or they ask for bribe themselves. In such situation it is not clear what the influence of the announcements of the central electoral commission head or police chief may have on voters, who are faced with violations and unfair treatment in any contact with state officials in any sector.
N.Zohrabyan also reminded the information published in media, according to which the ink stamp to be put in the passports of voters on the voting day will disappear not in twelve hours as it is supposed to be but in several hours. If this ink disappears, the holders of those passports may make electoral violation by voting in other polling station after they have voted in another. There have been such situations before too. There are concerns that this violation will repeat on May 6 because several weeks ago information was published that there had been addresses, which had 50-100 registered tenants. The most interesting thing is that compared to 2008 the number of voters in the voter lists is more by 170,000 now. There are rumors that in every precinct in Yerevan several thousand additional voters have been registered. If there are no false passports, it means that people are going to vote in several places to provide the necessary number of votes. Naira Zohrabyan is suggesting to check the ink to be used during the election day to check if it disappears in several hours or twelve hours as it is supposed to be. S.Nikoyan accepted that proposal and promised to find answers to those questions. There were people who said that they could either bring better ink for testing, or, even if the ink will disappear shortly, on the election day it will make a lot of noise and people will know about any possible violations like that.
There is also information that campaign events and meetings are being hold in schools too. For example, MP Samvel Alexanyan has met with teachers and parents of schoolchildren in the 7th precinct. There have been publications about bribe distribution at schools as well. S.Nikoyan agreed that such things are violation of the law on “public education” and announced that they would apply to the ministry of science and education to prevent such things from happening in the future. We wonder whether Samvel Nikoyan’s worries or the work of the other groups are not for imitation purposes only. The problem is that whatever they speak, nobody prevents the campaign people from collecting passport details and making other electoral falsifications. The impression is that the work of this group is initiated for the purpose of blowing the minds of NGOs and international organizations looking into the integrity of electoral processes. It is not by chance that those institutions appreciate Samvel Nikoyan’s initiative. “It is a very good process. It is very good that the parliament is keeping the electoral processes under control. It is very good that Mr. Nikoyan and representatives of political parties are involved in this group,” said the head of the Armenian office of the International Foundation of Electoral Systems who is monitoring the work of this group from the very first day of its foundation.
“If we are speaking of cases of political campaign at schools, and if we want to prevent and stop those things, and if you think it is imitation, it is your business. You can give such estimation for any work,” said S.Nikoyan in answer to our question.