The Conclusions and Recommendations section of Armenia’s 2012 Parliamentary Election, a report made by US-based Policy Forum Armenia (PFA), an international research organization, reads: “The RPA is the only beneficiary of the turnout-enhancing fraud observed during the parliamentary election.” www.aravot.am tried to find out during a conversation with Artak Davtyan, a member of the RPA parliamentary group and the chairman of the Science, Education, Culture, Youth and Sports Commission of the National Assembly, whether the RPA accepted this result of the research conducted by the international organization. The MP, as he put it, naturally didn’t share that opinion and went into detail: “Why do the registration lists become longer year by year, election by election… both the Central Election Commission (CEC) chairman and people competent to answer have given explanation to all that. As for the claim that the Republican Party is its beneficiary, as for in which force’s or whose interest it is, I think all this is an ungrateful and idle occupation. If there are people, and those people reached the voting age in that particular period, it is natural that they were included in the registration list.”
In response to our request for clarification whether the idea expressed in the report was groundless, Mr. Davtyan said the following: “They can connect anything in the world to something else that has nothing to do with it, since everything is interconnected. I just wouldn’t like to rashly label, at the end of the day, they made the report, and it is natural that they have their own interest. And they do what they do for their own benefit. In this sense, one should understand why they do all that. And in order to do that, we have to understand in whose interest it is or whose beneficiary they are.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
