“The Election Monitoring Committee has been monitoring the elections since this morning. Our observers are engaged in it. We are also collecting information from the press, and sometimes we make visits based on that, ”said Ruben Melikyan, a human rights activist.
Summarizing the results, he added, “We have some main violations which we have seen many examples of since this morning. The first one is that at the direction of the ruling party, there are already cases when either members of the opposition force headquarters or people with opposition views are detained, and searches are carried out from the headquarters or apartments, and this is a significant obstacle to the election activities of the opposition forces. The most recent was the case of Armen Grigoryan, when he was isolated from the election process as an observer on the basis of a statement by a pro-government force.”
Ruben Melikyan brought examples. “I, for example, was an observer at the 4/11 polling station. A similar case was registered. The police officer came and asked for an explanation, which is unacceptable, because the police officer can obtain an explanation in the best case scenario, and after receiving that explanation, the individual must continue their activities. For example, the court ordered a search of the headquarters for the ballot printing machine in the Sisian cases. And how many times have the headquarters of the opposition forces been searched, but nothing was found? That is, all searches were empty.
Now the question arises: who wrote the reports on the basis of which the searches were carried out, on the basis of which they went to court, received court decisions… Who wrote those reports, maybe the My Step deputies who write posts about good guys and bad guys? I am speaking about My Step candidate Vilen, I don’t know what (he is referring to Vilen Gabrielyan’s status about “Sometimes good guys gotta do bad things to make the bad guys pay”- G.H.), who has been writing statuses about how good guys sometimes have to do bad things…
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We are obligated to know the sources of the information on the basis of which searches have been conducted and nothing has been discovered. This is a serious violation. I have not remembered something similar. Such embarrassing meddling in the election process has not taken place in the past. This is especially taking place in Syunik. They are trying to maintain some numbers for the ruling party.”
Gohar Hakobyan
