The election bribe totally handed out in Gyumri during the National Assembly election got on Gyumri Independent News Channel (GALA) owner Vahan Khachatryan’s nerves, therefore, he decided to disgrace the ones who took election bribe. “Since I clearly know the mechanisms, by which the election bribe reaches its addressee, I know who hands out, how it is handed out, I have decided to establish a group that will supervise the election from within – i.e. the phenomenon of election bribery. During the presidential election in 2008, we broadcasted on television all the processes while handing out election bribe, we covered the faces of those people, in order not to harm them. The cases were very many at the time, then we saw that this was useless and we showed the faces during the last election, in order to sober people and to make them understand that they did a very bad thing,” said Mr. Khachatryan.
According to him, this method has already yielded results, after filming citizens taking election bribe in Charles Aznavour Square in a GAZel and showing them, many of them involved their connections and sent them to the TV company, in order to take their faces out of the video. According to the owner of GALA, 10 people have already approached him “giving themselves in” that they have appeared in the GAZel by chance. “There was a case, when after seeing this video, a husband called his wife from Russia, rebuking, ‘Have I sent you not enough money that you are taking money in a GAZel?’” Vahan Khachatryan says that they will, first of all, call on people not to take election bribe, since it disgraces our country and GALA will report those who don’t understand to the police. According to our interlocutor, election bribery gradually reaches a terrible extent and it is a disgrace for the nation. “A woman has come to me recently and complained, saying, ‘Why did you show me, while taking election bribe?’ and when I explained that it was a crime, told her not to do that, she would be jailed, the woman said to me that a leader of a party had called for taking and voting for whom they wanted. I was compelled to explain that this party leader would not go to prison in her stead. It should be explained to those people from the beginning, in order that they may not make such appeals, they will instigate people to commit a crime, at the end of the day, he is a public figure and what he says has an influence on people.”
In the TV channel owner’s words, GALA will do so that they fear it. “If they are not afraid of the prosecutor’s office, the police, at least, they will fear us. I wouldn’t like us to play the role of a police officer or a prosecutor, but what can we do, we should prevent our children somehow, shouldn’t we? We are compelled to do that too,” concluded our interlocutor.
Nune AREVSHATYAN
