OSCE/ODHIR and PACE observers made a preliminary conclusion, which contained claims about ballot box stuffing and falsifying protocols, while the competent bodies and officials claim that no such things happened during the election. “International observers reported isolated cases of serious violations, such as falsification of results or protocols (four cases) or indications that ballot box stuffing had occurred earlier (five cases). Figures on the results protocols frequently did not reconcile, one in three Precinct Election Commissions (PECs) observed had problems completing the protocols, and one in four PECs did not post copies of the protocols for public scrutiny,” reads the preliminary document put forward by the mission. In this regard, Davit Harutyunyan, the head of the National Assembly state and legal issues committee and a member of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) executive body, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am that he had never claimed that there had been no such cases. He said that
he didn’t know about them. “Everything must be grounded. I don’t know based on what they say that,” our interlocutor responded to the notes made by observers about ballot stuffing.
As for falsifying statements, he said, “They should have been familiar with our legislation. Yes, a statement can be changed and it is clearly regulated by the law and in principal, it doesn’t raise doubts why a statement should be changed. If they mean that, I will not agree with them here. In all the other cases, when there is a case of falsifying a statement, there is an institute of recounting. At the moment, there are a few applications for recounting and those checkups will show what happened.”
Nelly GRIGORYAN
