Yesterday Arman Musinyan, an Armenian National Congress (ANC) candidate for city council, said that their examination of the voter registration lists had shown that more than a thousand citizens who had been registered in the regions in the February 18 election were now registered in Yerevan. Heghine Bisharyan, a deputy leader of the Rule of Law Party (RLP), didn’t agree with Musinyan’s claims and gave the example of their examination. “The voter registration lists have not grown. I don’t know, perhaps opposition forces have their methods of checking. We hand out our campaign materials in all places based on the lists of local residents. It is not so; the families haven’t grown on the lists, but there are many closed doors. We will follow and will surely make statements, if there is any voting in the polling place on behalf of any closed door, if we notice that the resident is not there, is not in the country, the door is closed, but someone has voted on his behalf,” Ms. Bisharyan told www.aravot.am. Ms. Bisharyan had also received news of election bribery, but she is not concerned yet, because, “In some neighborhoods, there is talk that heads of condominiums have collected passport data, have drawn lists to hand out election bribes. This is just talk, we haven’t actually come across such cases, but we call on the residents not to be included in such lists. Although it is obvious already that election bribes don’t influence the residents; they readily accept, but as readily vote for the one they want. If someone has additional money, doesn’t pay taxes, has collected money by certain means and hands out to the people, let the people either say no, or if they are attracted, let them make the right decision.” Talking about the fact that officials and neighborhood tough guys had impeded the work of journalists and representatives of opposition forces and had subjected them to violence in recent days, Ms. Bisharyan said: “With regard to their saying that there are repressions, attacks on this or that person, I must say that it is a little exaggerated; a separate incident has happened, I don’t deny it. But it is not like they are pressuring someone, because he is a member of this or that party…. There are neighborhood tough guys who have undertaken a task of being more Catholic than the Pope and they say all the time, ‘This mountain is mine, this tree is mine, this neighborhood is mine, this hallway is mine,’ this exists and happens to everyone. However, we would like those people to whom such a thing happens to quickly respond, let the mass media go, film, disgrace and ask them why they restrict people’s rights. Yes, there are neighborhood princes who want to take such steps and they turn the local residents against themselves and do the opposite.” In response to our question whether the neighborhood princes she had mentioned were members of any party and why they took such steps, Ms. Bisharyan said that we were asking a provocative question.
