GOOD BUT…

The report on the Armenian parliamentary elections was represented yesterday in 3-5 minutes, and there was no other speech.

It seemed before the discussion that this will be a historical day for Armenia as our country will be praised in the CE Parliamentary Assembly for the first time after its accession. Dutch parliamentarian Leo Platvoet’s report was perfectly positive for Armenia, and was the main remark: “The elections on May 12 were held according to CE commitments and standards of democratic elections, but there are still some omissions. The authorities of Armenia, as well as other participants of the electoral process, displayed political will to go over the previous omissions and to improve the current elections though there are some unsolved problems”. But it was also mentioned that it was bad omissions had been observed during the decisive moment of the account. Some of them are serious, and it shadows the initial positive remark.

The report on our parliamentary elections launched at 19:10 /Yerevan time/ and was over  in 5 minutes, as none of 4 reporters spoke about the report on the RA NA elections. We should also mention that the report on the elections of Armenia was included within the framework of the report on the progress activities of the Assembly’s Bureau and Standing Committee. It wasn’t a separate issue and there was no resolution project. Leo Platvoet’s oral

Report lasted several minutes. He said in particularly that the information about bought votes was groundless, as only two cases were detected. He also noted that counting the votes was slow, it wasn’t over during their press conference on May 13, and so they didn’t have enough time for the existed negative demonstrations. By the way it is mentioned in the written text of the report that the need of premature press conference becomes problematic not for the first time and there is a remark not to publish the initial remarks untill the count of votes haven\’t been over.

We should note that 8 persons have been registered for the report and 2 of 4 persons who had time to make a speech  were Russian delagates Michael Margelov and Ivan Melnikov. The first of them spoke about secret jails, which is a theme of core importance for the agenda of this session and the second spoke about the necessity to discuss the theme on  installation of the U.S. radio navigation station  for identification of satellites in territory of Europe. The discussion was interrupted here. But it also became clear that there was no Armenian and Azeri in the rest of 4 registered delegates.