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Armenia: On Election Day, Familiar Complaints And A Familiar Finish

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  • Armenia: On Election Day, Familiar Complaints And A Familiar Finish

    ARMENIA: ON ELECTION DAY, FAMILIAR COMPLAINTS AND A FAMILIAR FINISH
    Marianna Grigoryan

    EurasiaNet.org
    http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65370
    May 7 2012
    NY

    Elections in Armenia on May 6 should not significantly alter the
    current balance of power in parliament, according to preliminary
    results. The most significant, unanswered question is whether
    incumbent authorities conducted a clean enough vote to satisfy the
    European Union.

    EU officials had said prior to Election Day that the conduct of vote
    would play a major role in defining diplomatic relations between
    Brussels and Yerevan.

    After the polls closed on May 6, leading representatives of the
    Republican Party of Armenia, the leader of the three-party governing
    coalition, were quick to tout the vote as free-and-fair. Prime Minister
    Tigran Sarkisian, for example, called the poll "the most transparent"
    in the 20-year "history of our newly independent state."

    Republican Party spokesperson Eduard Sharmazanov also pronounced the
    voting to be largely irregularity-free.

    "If someone thinks differently, I would ask for facts; not rhetoric
    and speeches, but specific facts," lectured Sharmazanov. "There have
    been no facts."

    But international observers managed to come up with a few. Observers
    from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's
    Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights OSCE/ODIHR),
    the Council of Europe, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and European
    Parliament assessed the vote count negatively in roughly 20 percent
    of the polling stations observed.

    Speaking at a May 7 press conference in Yerevan, Francois-Xavier de
    Donnea, the special coordinator for the OSCE's 250-member short-term
    observer team, praised Armenia "for its electoral reforms and its
    open and peaceful campaign environment," yet noted that the election
    law was not always enforced by election commissions, or observed by
    "stakeholders."

    "The international commitments to which Armenia has freely subscribed
    were not always respected," de Donnea said.

    Inaccurate voter lists, handouts (money, cell phones, and even
    basturma, an Armenian dried meat, according to some reports),
    intimidation tactics, voter bussing and carousel voting were among
    the familiar repertoire of election-day irregularities alleged by
    opposition monitors and local election observers. Local observers
    planned to hold a news conference on May 8.

    The 170-member Commonwealth of Independent States observation mission
    offered a rosier picture of the voting. CIS mission head Vladimir
    Garkun, a veteran Belarusian diplomat, declared irregularities to
    be mostly "technical," adding that "Armenia is on the right path
    to democracy."

    The 62.6-percent official voter turnout on May 6 was the largest
    since Armenia's 2003 parliamentary election.

    According to the preliminary results, the Republican Party gained just
    over 44 percent of the vote, far outpacing its nearest competitor,
    multimillionaire businessman Gagik Tsarukian's Prosperous Armenia
    Party, which is also part of the current governing coalition.

    Prosperous Armenia gained 30.2 percent of the votes, according to
    the preliminary results. The third coalition member, the scandal-hit
    Orinats Yerkir (Rule of Law) Party, barely cleared the 5-percent
    threshold.

    The Armenian National Congress, headed by former president Levon
    Ter-Petrosian, led opposition parties with 7.1 percent of the vote.

    The Heritage Party, the outgoing parliament's lone opposition group,
    and the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutiun
    barely qualified for representation, attracting 5.79 percent and 5.73
    percent of the vote respectively.

    In all, 90 of the 131 seats in parliament will be allotted according
    to the percentage of the vote given to a political party. The remaining
    41 seats were determined in first-past-the-post votes among individual
    candidates. It would appear that candidates aligned with the Republican
    Party won most of the individual-constituency seats up for grabs.

    How authorities follow through on investigating election-related
    complaints could become an issue. Most of the 494 complaints - all but
    33 filed by a single person - submitted to Armenia's Central Election
    Committee before election day were not investigated, recounted a
    post-election report issued by the OSCE/ODIHR, Council of Europe,
    European Parliament and OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

    "Almost all other complaints filed to the CEC were denied consideration
    on various technical grounds, or rejected, often without due
    consideration of the claim's substance or evidence," the report
    found. "Some decisions lacked sound legal basis."

    Widespread media reports about the disappearance of stamps placed by
    election officials in passports to prevent repeat voting kicked off
    Election Day. CEC Chairperson Tigran Mukuchian earlier had asserted
    that the stamps would last for 12 hours; he attributed the stamps'
    disappearing act to failure to stir the stamp ink before use, but a
    test later run at the CEC showed that stirring made no difference,
    Panorama.am reported.

    Members of the opposition and some local election observers believe
    the vanishing stamps facilitated carousel voting, a longtime feature
    of Armenian elections. The Armenian National Congress has filed a
    complaint with the CEC about the stamps, media reported.

    Even if the elections were the fairest conducted in recent memory,
    the results still left some voters feeling embittered. "I myself
    witnessed how people are transported to the elections. And when you
    look at the results, and the discredited Orinats Yerkir Party gets
    as many votes as the opposition, I just want to leave this country,"
    grumbled 32-year-old designer Edgar Matevosian.

    Twenty-six-year-old philologist Armine Hayrapetian expressed relief
    that, unlike the 2008 presidential vote, which led to deadly rioting;
    "[e]verything went normally and everything was calm."

    A fireball from exploding gas balloons at a May 4 Republican Party
    campaign rally that left at least 154 people hospitalized was the
    lone major incident that marred that peaceful assessment.

    "[T]his time, it was significantly easier, and if some complain about
    voter bribes, let them just not take the bribes," Hayrapetian said.

    "People decide themselves what to do and what not to do."

    Editor's note: Marianna Grigoryan is a freelance reporter in Yerevan
    and the editor of MediaLab.am.

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