The leader of the Republican Party of Armenia Vahram Baghdasaryan has not managed to get acquainted with the final report of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights on the parliamentary elections taken place on April 2 in Armenia.
“The pressures and intimidation towards the voters, as well as statements about large-scale vote-buying, have negatively affected the election campaign, increasing the existing mistrust over election process”, the report implies.
“If facts are present, they will naturally be discussed within the relevant bodies. Anyway, we should underpin that during the elections no complaints have been made by any trustee or committee member. If such cases exist, which is not excluded at all, they will be taken to investigation to the respective bodies”, tells Vahram Baghdasaryan referring to the following viewpoint: despite the statements of the RPA members constituting that the elections were free, transparent and fair and their results do not induce doubts, this authoritative organization has recorded rather serious shortcomings nevertheless.
We said it is witnessed that people do not have trust in the judicial system. Vahram Baghdasaryan contradicted: “It is an abstract conversation. What does “they do not have trust in, they avoid of” mean? If facts are in place, they will be recorded. Anyway, no one can deny that overall this was a huge step up in election system – these elections as compared with the previous ones. Rather big achievements are present and no one can deny it. We ourselves do not say everything was ideally done. We will take this into consideration further on.”
By the way, the observers have reconfirmed the positive assessments of their initial report as well.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
