The National Center for Parliamentarism in Armenia released a statement the other day, in which it informs about an initiative to establish a commission to supervise the activities of the OSCE/ODIHR monitoring mission. This initiative is caused by the fact that the OSCE/ODIHR has carried out monitoring in Armenia since 1996, but since that year all the national elections in the Republic of Armenia have been described as illegitimate.
The statement reads: “So either the OSCE/ODIHR makes incompetent proposals or the government of the Republic of Armenia doesn’t carry those out. In particular, it came out recently that none of the proposals or directions of the OSCE/ODIHR had been carried out. So we conduct an election in opposition to the OSCE requirements and obligations, as it is mentioned in the final report of the OSCE/ODIHR on the 2012 parliamentary election. Under these circumstances, the contradictory statements in the introductory speech made by the head of the OSCE/ODIHR delegation to this election during a press conference a few days ago raise concerns. By the way, if we change the name of that delegation’s head with the name of the same delegation’s head to the previous election, nothing will change, those are the same banal statements, particularly ‘we have come to observe, not to criticize,’ or ‘we will be impartial’ etc. It seems we don’t understand that ‘alphabet.’ As a result, Ambassador
Heidi Tagliavini not only treats our society disrespectfully, but also doesn’t explain a set of important organizational issues, as well as gives untimely assessments, violating the provisions of their own Guidelines.”
The statement also informs: “We have established a group within the framework of the Commission for Legitimacy of Elections (CLE) to supervise the activities of the OSCE/ODIHR mission, which mainly aims at informing the international community and the Armenian public about the mission’s activities.” www.aravot.am inquired of Ruben Torosyan, the leader of the Human Rights-96 Party and a member of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) political council, whether this group’s work could yield positive results and fulfill its task. Mr. Torosyan replied: “The establishment of the group is just a formality, since, despite that, we have been monitoring the international observers’ compliance with the Armenian and international laws for a long time; it has been mentioned in all our reports. By the way, with regard to the illegal activities of international observers during the 2005 constitutional referendum, we filed a lawsuit in the International Criminal Court. We also inform the international community about the seriousness of the issue. Two members of our organization, as well as our 3 international partners, experts, are involved in the group. We think that quickly spreading information about international observers’ activities is a good result, since, unfortunately, they decide the result of our voting.”
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In response to our question whether the situation in the country was so tense that they even had to watch observers, Mr. Torosyan said the following: “The situation is so tense that neither candidates, nor the mass media, nor local and international observers respond to massive violations of the OSCE standards committed by the government. And international observers state without any consideration that they predict ‘good’ elections.
“Whereas the government is engaged in massive propaganda that this election ‘is noncompetitive,’ i.e. it doesn’t comply with the OSCE standards and thus is illegitimate.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
