US-based Policy Forum Armenia (FPA), an international research organization, made a special report entitled Armenia’s 2012 Parliamentary Election. The report reads: “True electoral reform in Armenia has, once again, been hijacked, only this time by even more inventive and well-concealed methods of falsification.”
The report mentions that “the authorities in Armenia put a new face on electoral fraud. The growing sophistication of fraud techniques and mechanisms, which are artfully concealed, make it difficult for outside observers to cite and document specific instances. It is electoral fraud 2.0 [new generation electoral fraud].”
We inquired of human rights advocate Avetik Ishkhanyan whether the report presented the objective situation in Armenia. He absolutely agreed with the expressed opinions and added: “I agree. It is hard to make revelations on the election day. One can notice some things that cannot be considered provable only through outside monitoring. For example, bringing people in buses. The fraud that existed before – violence, ballot-stuffing, changing records, falsification – is not there anymore. Now they rig in more civilized ways. For example, when we were monitoring in Arabkir, it turned out that many employees of the SAS Group were registered in different parts of the Republic of Armenia. So they use such technologies; one must have secret registration lists, other data to be able to reveal them. The term ‘electoral fraud 2.0’ is an interesting one.”
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Mr. Ishkhanyan noted that with regard to elections in the Republic of Armenia, the past experience showed that amendments to the Electoral Code had been made every time after rigging. Mr. Ishkhanyan compared the phenomenon with means of protection from nuclear weapons, when a lot of shelters were built to protect from them. In conclusion, A. Ishkhanyan stated that one just shouldn’t have created a nuclear bomb, as one shouldn’t have created electoral fraud.
In response to our question whether any new means of electoral fraud would be used in the upcoming presidential election, Mr. Ishkhanyan stated that the ones already tested during the parliamentary election would be employed, since society hadn’t found shelters from them yet. Talking about the reasons, our interlocutor noted: “The reason is the lack of the rule of law in Armenia, the fact that the law-enforcers and the judiciary are not independent. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been a need for all this, since the rule of law means that everyone is equal before the law.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
