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ISTANBUL: Election fraud claims run high as Armenians prepare to vot

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  • ISTANBUL: Election fraud claims run high as Armenians prepare to vot

    Today's Zaman, Turkey
    Feb 16 2013



    Election fraud claims run high as Armenians prepare to vote


    15 February 2013 /MUSTAFA EDİB YILMAZ, YEREVAN


    It's a once-in-a-five-year choice the Armenians can make, yet few here
    seem to be excited, with the presidential election ballot box
    appearing in only two days' time. The reason? Because it's like
    watching a movie after having been reminded too often about how it
    ends.
    So the news on President Serzh Sarksyan's highly expected victory
    following Monday's polls will not be surprising at all. For Alexander
    Iskandaryan, director of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute, "the
    race was over in December" when wealthy businessman Gagik Tsarukyan of
    the Prosperous Armenia Party ` which captured nearly 30 percent of the
    vote in the May 2012 parliamentary elections against Sarksyan's
    Republican Party of Armenia's 53 percent -- decided not to run in the
    elections.

    However, there are still candidates who would challenge the president
    at the ballot box. Six candidates to be exact, yet in Iskandaryan's
    words "they could only be rivals to each other, not to Sarksyan." In
    an apparent indication of the kind of frustration people were feeling,
    Andrias Ghukasyan -- a political analyst who also happened to be one
    of those candidates -- has been on a hunger strike since Jan.21,
    demanding "the fake elections be stopped."

    Another candidate, Raffi Hovannisian, who, according to almost all
    opinion polls one might come across, stands the biggest chance of
    replacing the current president for the next five years, explains that
    Armenians have not experienced "free and fair" elections since their
    country's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Indeed, he said,
    speaking to a group of Turkish journalists Thursday night, they have
    not seen any since the first presidential elections that brought Ter
    Petrosyan to power, under whom Hovannisian served as the first foreign
    minister of the country.

    According to Hovannisian, hundreds of public buildings -- among them
    schools and hospitals -- were used for Sarksyan's propaganda, one
    piece of information he said his campaign has documented to relevant
    election observers. He went on to claim that civil servants and
    military conscripts were too often pressured to vote in a particular
    way by the government in the landlocked Caucasian country, adding that
    Sarksyan, however, on a number of occasions made clear that he would
    do everything to ensure elections are properly held. "We applaud the
    president for those remarks and will hold him to his promises," he
    said. When asked what his reaction will be if he finds out that
    Monday's election is no exception to the Armenians' bitter experience
    for years now, he said, "I will tell you that on Tuesday."

    Sarksyan won the previous presidential elections in 2008 in the first
    round with nearly 53 percent of the vote against Petrosyan's 21.5
    percent, a result the latter strongly disputed with allegations of
    fraud. The 2012 general elections were marred by similar accusations
    towards the government, whose results were recognized by none of the
    four opposition parties represented in Parliament.

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