The monitor is not the God

The presence of the international monitors during the elections is a necessary, but not sufficient condition

 On Thursday, when the Armenian National Congress supervisor Levon Zurabyan met with the EU representative in Armenia, the ambassadors of  Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Sweden to Armenia, as well as the embassy representatives of a set of other EU member states, he gave importance along with other questions to not only holding free, fair and transparent elections, but also stressed that the important guarantee for free and fair elections can become sending an international monitoring mission with the support of the EU and its member states that will allow to have at least one permanent monitor’s presence in each of about 2000 polling stations considering that that might be a guarantee of free and transparent elections.

And in the conversation with the RL L. Zurabyan expressed conviction that the legislative amendments are not sufficient for guaranteeing fair elections. As he put that, “The Amendment of the Election Code” is not so important, as the people’s determination and the general political atmosphere, as well as the fact that the people will rise and be determined.”

 Certainly, the “detached” look of the monitors and especially the representatives of the international monitoring mission can be sobering and influential on the day of an election at the polling stations, however one must remember that, for example, during presidential elections in 2008 the monitors, more than 600 from international organizations and 3000 from local organizations, were not able to prevent with their presence not only the electoral frauds, but also their protocols and strict reports did not save the day. Yesterday “Aravot” talked about this issue with an ex-member of the Central Electoral Committee of the RA, the representative of the parliamentary alliance called “Justice”, Felix Khachatryan. He argued that in the past although the international monitors were at the polling stations, however, as he put it, “Scumbags did their scum business.” Nevertheless, the ex-representative of the CEC stressed, “The issue is that the monitor has to be permanently present at the opened station during the whole polling process, in order to see and record both the electoral process, including the possible filling of the boxes and other illegal actions, and follow the count. But for the fair and transparent election it is also important the suggestion that was declined by the government to allow making the signed voting list public, in order to make it clear how many dead people or people that are not currently present in the country “have participated” in the voting.”

 In response to our question would it not be like shaking one’s fists after the fight even if the monitors recorded the frauds, Mr. Khachatryan said, “No, because after the voting there is a possibility to appeal the results, and if a monitor himself has recorded a fraud, then that can be the reason for revising, finding invalid the results at the certain station.”

 The representative of the parliamentary opposition, the Heritage faction leader Stepan Safaryan had a completely different notion. He is convinced that the presence of the monitors is, certainly, a necessary, but not sufficient condition to hold free, fair and transparent elections, because “the monitor has no possibility to intervene in the election process.” The MP said that it is more important to prevent possible riggings, than recording those. “Therefore, it is not accidental that the Heritage faction adopted an active position of amending the Election Code from the very beginning taking part in discussions and demanding a balanced staff of election committees, 50/50 opposition-government, making the voting lists public, the video recording of the election process etc. To be frank, the presence of the monitors and the recording of electoral frauds not thinking of preventing those, I do not think are sufficient”, said the faction leader. S. Safaryan added that during the meeting of the Heritage Party with the same ambassadors and representatives of the embassies they also gave importance to the necessity of inviting monitors by Armenia during the forthcoming elections, “We stated that not only the OSCE, PACE, but also the European Parliament should send monitoring groups. However, I repeat that we think taking steps toward prevention of riggings is more important.”

I.e. the only and exclusive condition to hold fair and transparent elections is on one hand the government’s political will of not rigging the elections, on the other the society’s supervision and activity.