“The 2008 presidential election will confirm that improving the electoral processes and conducting democratic elections in Armenia are already a tradition,” this is an excerpt from President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan’s election program.
Analyzing the situation five years after that, can we claim that the President of the Republic of Armenia kept his promise? www.aravot.am asked a set of experts dealing with electoral processes this question.
Artur Sakunts, the manager of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office, noted during a conversation with us that Serzh Sargsyan should have first of all assessed the 2008 presidential election, which he didn’t do. Then he went into detail: “If he promised that, and it was in his election program, then considering the 2008 election, he didn’t keep his promise, because not only did he not take any attitude, but he also considered it normal that he governed as a result of that election. After that, the election for community leader took place in Yerevan, which was a disgrace. I was in the electoral district of Malatia-Sebastia as an observer, it was just total pressure on voters, fraud, ballot stuffing etc. Or Nikol Pashinyan’s no. 10 electoral district in 2010, where we carried out monitoring again – there were violations, pressure and fraud here again. It happened during Serzh Sargsyan’s presidency. Manifestations of aggressiveness, pressure, also during the latest parliamentary election, in the electoral district where Samvel Alexanyan was nominated and in other electoral districts, the spread of fraud during the election campaign and on the election day…. Although violence was not like the violence during the election for the Yerevan council, but the problem of using the administrative resource wasn’t overcome in any election. There was an inappropriate response to alerts of election bribes; an investigation was not conducted.”
Enumerating the above-mentioned, A. Sakunts stated: “This long observation allows me to claim and reason that Serzh Sargsyan didn’t kept and couldn’t have kept his promise, since one should first of all have fully assessed the 2008 presidential election. Prisoners of conscience who are free not thanks to justice, but as a result of amendments to the amnesty law existed during his very presidency.”
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Harutyun Hambardzumyan, the head of the Choice is Yours NGO, stated: “I wouldn’t say that the president kept or not kept his promise by 100 percent. But it is a fact that we made progress in this election compared to the previous one. The progress is that the flagrant violations that took place in the past – for example, ballot stuffing, violating the rights of observers and proxies, fights in electoral districts – yes, they happened, but were not so wide-spread. Those happened in the electoral districts of Malatia-Sebastia and Spitak, but if we analyze 1960 electoral districts, they account for a small percentage.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
