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Armenia: Presidential Challenger Rejects Poll Result

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  • Armenia: Presidential Challenger Rejects Poll Result

    ARMENIA: PRESIDENTIAL CHALLENGER REJECTS POLL RESULT

    Institute for War & Peace Reporting, UK
    IWPR Caucasus Reporting #677
    Feb 25 2013

    Raffi Hovhannisyan rallies thousands to back his claim that he should
    be president.

    By Arpi Beglaryan - Caucasus

    The main opposition candidate in Armenia's presidential election,
    Raffi Hovhannisyan, has refused to accept defeat, and says the
    official figures are the result of widespread fraud.

    Hovhannisyan has rallied supporters on the streets and pledged to use
    all legal means available to get the result of the February 18 ballot
    overturned.

    Official results from Armenia's electoral commission give Hovhannisyan
    36.7 per cent of the vote, some way behind the incumbent, Serzh
    Sargsyan, who has declared victory with 58.6 per cent. The other five
    candidates scored lower percentages.

    Sargsyan won by significantly fewer votes than most commentators had
    been predicting, but his opponent insists he actually lost. Instead,
    Hovhannisyan says he himself was the clear winner, with the backing of
    four out of every five voters.

    "I am the newly-elected president," he told journalists in Freedom
    Square in central Yerevan on February 19.

    Three days later, Hovhannisyan had a meeting with Sargsyan at which
    the latter neither conceded defeat nor offered him concessions.

    Hovhannisyan's Heritage party, set up in 2005, is the smallest
    represented in parliament. But since Armenia's leading opposition
    politicians refused to take part in the presidential election,
    Hovhannisyan's appears to have acted as a unifying figure for
    anti-Sargysan, and this is reflected in his surprisingly strong
    showing, even according to the official poll figures. (See also
    Armenia Gears Up for "Least Interesting" Ballot.)

    "The election results gave one a clear sense of voters' distrust in
    and dissatisfaction with the government," Artur Sakunts, head of the
    Vanadzor branch of the Helsinki Citizen's Assembly, said.

    Hovhannisyan was born in the United States and grew up there, moving
    to what was then Soviet Armenia in 1988. He served as the new state's
    foreign minister in 1991-92.

    On February 22, Hovhannisyan addressed a rally of supporters in
    Yerevan. His party put the numbers at 20,000 or 30,000, while news
    reporters from www.emedia.am said there were 5,000 to 10,000
    participants.

    "We will fight peacefully, as prescribed by the constitution, but our
    movement will not weaken," he said. "We will secure new victories and
    take them to every town in our country, from north to south,"
    Hovhannisyan told the crowd.

    Smaller protests took place in a number of regional towns.

    Election observers have come out with differing assessments of how
    fairly - or unfairly - the ballot was run. Some groups like The Choice
    is Yours reported some breaches of the rules, but probably not enough
    to affect the overall result. Others like the Armenian Bar Association
    alleged widespread, flagrant cases of fraud.

    Sakunts of the Helsinki Citizen's Assembly was an election observer in
    the Tavush and Lori regions, and he said the lack of independent
    observers and opposition representatives made it hard to be confident
    that the polling was properly run.

    "There were representatives of Sargsyan in all the polling stations,
    but of the other candidates, only Raffi Hovhannisyan and Hrant
    Bagratyan had representatives in attendance, and only a few at that,"
    he said. "As a result, many polling stations were not controlled,
    which provides a good environment for electoral violations," he said.

    The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, which
    sends poll monitoring teams to its member states, has often come out
    with scathing findings after elections in former Soviet states. On
    this occasion, however, it was broadly positive.

    "The February 18 presidential election was generally well-administered
    and was characterised by a respect for fundamental freedoms," the OSCE
    mission's preliminary report concluded, based on the findings of its
    300 monitors. "Contestants were able to campaign freely. Media
    fulfilled their legal obligation to provide balanced coverage, and all
    contestants made use of their free airtime."

    The OSCE report did criticise some aspects of the poll, although it
    concluded that this election was an improvement on the 2008 polls
    which resulted in mass protests, clashes between police and opposition
    supporters, and almost a dozen deaths.

    "A lack of impartiality of the public administration, misuse of
    administrative resources, and cases of pressure on voters were of
    concern. While election day was calm and orderly, it was marked by
    undue interference in the process, mainly by proxies representing the
    incumbent, and some serious violations were observed," the report
    said.

    NGO activists in Armenia who felt the OSCE had been far too soft on
    the authorities burst into a hall in the hotel where the mission was
    holding a press conference on February 19.

    They included Lena Nazaryan, who works for Transparency International.

    She observed the election in the town of Artashat, where she says she
    saw people from Sargyan's Republican Party working with local
    officials to fix the ballot. She says they behaved properly only when
    international observers were around.

    Nazaryan and her fellow-activists tried to present their own findings
    to the journalists assembled for the OSCE event.

    "There was a struggle because the organisers of the press conference
    tried to escort the activists out of the room. Nevertheless, we did
    manage to present our point of view," she said.

    Eduard Sharmazanov, spokesman for the Republican Party, said
    allegations of fraud were mere rumours and should not be taken
    seriously.

    "Violations are not toys to be played with," he warned. "No serious
    incident of electoral fraud sufficient to influence the course of vote
    was recorded. This election was the best in Armenia's recent history."

    Although several foreign leaders, including key foreign ally President
    Vladimir Putin of Russia, congratulated Sargsyan on his re-election,
    Hovhannisyan said he was determined to keep fighting to have the
    results overturned.

    Support for his cause still seems to be growing. Student groups in
    Yerevan announced they were going on strike.

    However, it is not clear whether there is the momentum to create a
    mass movement behind Hovhannisyan.

    "People gave their votes to Raffi not because they like him, but
    because they don't like the authorities," Alexander Iskandaryan, head
    of the Caucasus Institute, said. "The rallies Hovhannisyan is
    organising are unlikely to be sustained or to grow into mass action."

    Arpi Beglaryan is a journalist with the emedia.am website.

    http://iwpr.net/report-news/armenia-presidential-challenger-rejects-poll-result

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