Today in one of the PACE parliamentary groups, namely Liberal Democrat Alliance, Baroness Emma Nicholson, the head of the Parliamentary Election Observation Mission to Armenia and a member of that group, made a short statement on election that took place in Armenia on May 6. She stressed that the report of the observation mission she headed had been disputed by the Armenian government and president, also Davit Harutyunyan, the head of the Armenian delegation to the PACE, had said during the meeting of the Bureau that the PACE should not prepare reports regarding elections and that only the OSCE should deal with it. Baroness stated that she was absolutely against that approach.
Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) member Hermine Naghdalyan, also talked in this regard in the group, saying that she didn’t agree with the PACE Observation Mission’s report on the Armenian election either.
Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) member Naira Zohrabyan, a member of the alliance, said in regard to the matter at issue that her party had been in the coalition after the previous election in 2007, this time, getting more than twice as many votes, it had refused to be a part of the coalition and referred to the statement made by the three parties, members of the joint staff, stating that there were clauses in the PACE report, with which those three forces agreed, in particular, stressing once again the problem regarding vanishing ink, which was also mentioned in the report of Emma Nicholson’s observation delegation, she talked about the expanded voting lists, stating that they agreed with that concern expressed in the report too. As for the observation that the PACE shouldn’t make reports on elections from then on, Naira Zohrabyan communicated the opinion of the PAP on that issue, which is that the PAP doesn’t agree with that observation or approach. “Although I don’t think that head of the Armenian delegation Davit Harutyunyan defined it in that manner, we don’t agree with it, because the PACE has to fulfill its direct observation-supervision mechanisms over the electoral processes that take place in the member-states of the Council of Europe.”
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The Baroness also talked about the statement that the OSCE report on the National Assembly election made different or opposite emphases, “I want to say that our report and the OSCE report should be considered together, because we cooperated with the OSCE very actively and if you carefully read the OSCE report and our report, you will see that the OSCE report is the stricter version of ours. Therefore, they cannot contradict each other.”
Naira MAMIKONYAN
