Hovhannes Kocharyan, the head of the Passport and Visa Department, informed yesterday that people who are not registered in the capital could participate in the Yerevan City Council election too. www.aravot.am inquired of forces participating in the city council election whether this idea didn’t involve risks that there would be electoral fraud. Stepan Safaryan who is included in the Hello Yerevan list stated that they saw such risks and went into detail: “There is information that people are brought from the regions and registered in the apartments of people who will surely or forcibly vote for the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA). The police wave aside complaints saying that they cannot do anything, if the owner of the apartment agrees to registration. However, all this is organized by the RPA, and it turns out that using their people brought from villages, they will elect Taron at the expense of residents of Yerevan. That idea is a provision of the European Charter, but in this case, it is evident that the ruling party uses it to impact the election results, to rig the election.” Naira Zohrabyan, the secretary of the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) parliamentary group, said that now it was too late to change anything and added: “Every
political force that has levers and intends to abuse them naturally doesn’t hesitate for a split second to use this lever too. Therefore, one should also revise this situation. If the institution of elections operated properly, legitimately, and correctly in our country, one could consider it a normal idea. However, every new instrument or power can be used for evil purposes.” N. Zohrabyan informed that they had received a lot of calls warning that people are registered at the addresses of gas stations and church backyards. Arsen Hambardzumyan, an alternate representative of the Supreme Body of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), didn’t rule out possible risks and stated that they had made a proper request to the Passport and Visa Department, Police of the Republic of Armenia, in advance to give information on the people who had been included in the voter registration lists, but didn’t have citizenship or had been included in the voter registration lists in cases provided for by the law, as divorce, demobilization etc. He added: “We check voter registration lists using methods that are available to us, in order to rule out risks. When the final list of registered voters is made public on May 3 – and we know from past experience that “corrections” are made in that list made public two days before elections, and there is practically no time to carry out appropriate checks – we will examine those lists too.” A. Hambardzumyan stated that there were cases known to them when an illogically large number of voters were registered at the same address, when the owner of the given apartment assured that he didn’t know how other persons had been registered at his address, when members of the same family had been included in voter registration lists of different polling places. Vahagn Khachatryan who tops the Armenian National Congress list, in his turn, said: “I see risks. We have information that people have been brought from villages and registered, and they can be used. The ANC will carry out supervision, furthermore, very serious one. The government should know that we will complain, since electoral fraud is being committed from this moment on. For example, the government works on the very votes of people who are not in the Republic of Armenia, and that is why we say that those who are absent from the Republic of Armenia should be taken off the lists. We have received many warning calls, but we cannot use the names of those people just yet.” Karine Achemyan, a member of the RPA parliamentary group, said in response to the expressed concerns: “There are no such cases and cannot be. There was such news during the election campaign; now we are reaching the climax, and the tensions are rising. They talk about cases, numbers, and people who are registered and will vote, but there cannot be such things. Given such transparent lists as today, when everything is done and clarified in public, one should not spread such false information.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
