A candidate for Yerevan City Council Nikol Pashinyan called for an urgent press conference, and a journalist of “Haykakan Zhamanak” Anna Zakharyan was with him. According to the journalist she has noticed overcrowdings at Taron Margaryan’s pre-electoral campaign office at Kurighyan Street and supposing that they are giving away bribes, she has gone inside and started to take photos of what was going on.
“People were coming out with a ballot in their hands, the number 3 already selected, with some ballot paper with 1/3 parameters that I didn’t have time to understand what it was and also with money- I’ve seen one holding 20.000 drams. So basically at least that many people have received it. When they figured out that I was an outsider and that I was filming them, they came up to me and some guys took my phone away. They returned it only after a long while with most of the things in my phone deleted. I strongly demanded my phone, but they said they had no idea what I was talking about. But when I was going home hopelessly, they tried to return my phone on my way. It was in napkins so that their fingertips wouldn’t be on it, then they reached my home and when I opened the door, they threw the phone, that was still in napkins, inside my house and went away,”- said Anna Zakharyan.
She added that after a while she went back to the scene, but the picture of Taron Margaryan had already been taken off. Nikol Pashinyan supposes that that piece of paper is the mechanism, that’s required to be put inside the envelopes. He mentioned that they should turn to the Central Election Commission, to declare all those kind of ballots invalid. After Anna Zakharyan’s alarm, Nikol Pashinyan decided to go to the scene, where there were dozens of civilians gathered: “Vardan Vardanyan, a former deputy candidate proposed by Samvel Aleksanyan as a puppet at the 2012 parliamentary elections, also came out of the building. He came out and started to make prevocational announcements, like ‘who are they to come here’ and such nonsense. I was following the events with a quiet smile. And he, I don’t know why didn’t dare attack me; instead, he hurled himself at our proxy Hayk Sargsyan. He kicked his hand with his foot and escaped.”
Nikol Pashinyan told all of this to the police and thinks that Vardan Vardanyan, who is most probably in charge of the campaign office, has already committed at least 3 crimes- giving away bribes, preventing a journalist’s activities and the attack: “After our famous actions, Taron Margaryan has raised the rates. But our promises remain valid.”
Ami CHICHAKYAN
PS According to Nikol Pashinyan: “The ones that took the phone of the journalist of “Haykakan Zhamanak” away didn’t notice and delete one of the videos. Here it is.”
