Galust Sahakyan talks about the assessments of the OSCE observers and the Human Rights Defender of Armenia
“This election showed improvement, but lacked genuine competition. We are pleased to note progress on several aspects, but competition is critical if Armenia is going to live up to the aspirations of its people for a vibrant and engaging democracy,” Torino Picula, the head of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly election observation mission, stated today. By the way, this observation mission is in Armenia at the invitation of the Armenian government. In response to a question of www.aravot.am whether he agreed with the assessment of the observers, Galust Sahakyan, a member of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) executive body and the leader of the RPA parliamentary group, said: “I have heard personally and am aware of those statements; you ask a question using an excerpt from a general idea. The election showed that Armenia has made a positive step toward democratization; somehow even effective. Therefore, no election can be better than the best. The election was competitive; more than 60 percent participated, and I think that there are no unprecedented violations or even mistakes for the moment.” Karen Andreasyan, the Human Rights Defender of Armenia, asserted in his preliminary statement: “Nonetheless, there can be no assessment complete and trustworthy for the Armenian public, if the police of Armenia doesn’t objectively put forward how many alerts they have received and how many of them were grounded – distribution of bribes, double-voting, directed voting, ballot stuffing, pressure on a member of the commission or a poll-watcher during the calculation of votes. Moreover, the police should make public the grounds and reasons for finding those alerts grounded or not. It is very important to quickly find out and make public why the work of the Gala TV channel, was disrupted. One should quickly reveal also the cases of impeding journalists’ and observers’ activities and hold the guilty responsible.” In response to a question of www.aravot.am in this regard, the RPA executive body member said: “He is talking about the 200 complaints that have been made. They have been sent to the competent bodies. He draws a general conclusion that those complaints should be considered and expresses his opinion on what electoral fraud is. It is a philosophical and rhetorical statement, which is not related to any concrete violation or negative assessment.”
Nelly GRIGORYAN
