Is the real reason because the invitation was not from the Prime Minister of Armenia?
“We cannot be observers in two elections at once. This is why we didn’t accept the Central Electoral Commission’s invitation. Unfortunately, we will not be able to observe the Yerevan City Council elections,” said the Secretary General of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the CoE, Andreas Kiefer, in an interview with Aravot. He explained why a delegation from the CoE will not be observing the elections.
The Secretary General said that on the same weekend as the Yerevan City Council elections, Bosnia and Herzegovina will also be holding elections. A few days ago, Aravot had information that the CoE congress rejected the invitation to monitor the elections for technical reasons. Until that same day, President of the Central Electoral Commission Tigran Mukuchyan explained that he sent the invitation, but had not yet received a response.
The CEC also wrote to the Minister of Territorial Administration regarding the upcoming elections on September 23rd, saying that territorial administrative bodies appealed to the prime minister from the CoE territorial administration throughout the election. Finally, the CEC send the letter to the CoE congress, despite the fact that such invitations were always sent by the prime minister in the past.
Andreas Kiefer emphasized in his interview that the congress is very interested in Armenia, and he announced, “We are very interested in following what is happening in Armenia. We have sent a delegation of observers to previous elections in Armenia when we received invitations. This time, we did not have the ability to give a positive response, since we have to observe elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the same day.” Answering our question of whether this was truly the only reason, since there are also opinions that the CoE will not attend due to the fact that the invitation was not sent from the prime minister, Andreas Kiefer said, “We have a very pragmatic approach. We don’t want an invitation of the presidential level. We need a guarantee that our observers will be able to enter voting centers. The CEC is the best organization for that.”
Tatev Harutyunyan
