Local self-government elections were held on September 18 in a number of communities of Armenia. Seven teams of the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities will be located in different electoral constituencies. The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, on September 15, met with a number of NGOs.
In an interview with Aravot.am, Chairman of the Committee to Protect Freedom of Speech, Ashot Melikyan, said that the observers were interested in their assessments of previous elections and the organization of these elections, “We talked about the amendments to the electoral legislation. They were particularly interested in the motives of the concern of civil society and the proposed amendments that were suggested by the opposition and civil society, and how it is possible to overcome these problems. Certainly, we talked about the so-called traditional electoral frauds, they were asking what they must more focus on to objectively assess the electoral process. They were asking our opinion, and at the end of the meeting, they said that they are satisfied with the result of the meeting.” Ashot Melikyan said that the meeting participants were trying to present the situation objectively and analyze the available problems, “We expressed hope that the amendments that were made to the Electoral Code will be brought to their logical conclusion.
Although the Code has been amended, however, the quality of the elections does not only depend on the legislation, there are many other factors that have a negative impact and they are mainly frauds and technologies that are used: the election bribes and various types of a carousel. Hence, if the international observers will be able to notice all this and give an objective assessment, it will be very good. At the same time, I also said that after very often, after the elections, the Armenian society is disappointed with the assessment of international observers as they do not reflect the situation in some cases. The voter sees the frauds while the observers report one step forward.”
We asked whether the observers have answered his remark, Ashot Melikyan replied, “They said that since they feel they are truly independent, there will be no influence on them, and they are independent even of the ambassadors of their countries. They do not meet with them or if meeting, they are only advisory meetings. In short, they told us that they feel independent and will be unbiased in giving assessments. We’ll see how things will go.”
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Ami CHICHAKYAN
