Yerevan Deputy Mayor Suren Grigoryan, who is included in the pre-election list of the “Civil Contract” party, responded to the criticism of observation organizations regarding the misuse of administrative resources, saying that when you claim that someone misused an administrative resource, you should at least mention the specific article, clause, sub-clause of the “Electoral Code.”, by which the stipulated rule was violated. Daniel Ioannisyan, the representative of the “Independent Observer” observation organization and the Coordinator of programs for the Union of Informed Citizens, hosted the “Aravot” program “Areresum” (“Confrontation”), said: “Criminal Code, Article 211, Part 2, and Clause 3. Can it be more specific?’ It should be noted that that article is “Forcing to carry out propaganda or refusing to carry out propaganda or otherwise hindering the carrying out of propaganda.”
The indicated point refers to the act, which was performed “by using official or official powers or the influence caused by them.” “They have created competitive advantages for themselves due to their position,” Daniel Ioannisyan insisted, stating that these competitive advantages were expressed in particular by using the media resources of the Yerevan Municipality and the Public Television Company in favor of Tigran Avinyan.
The interim report of the “Independent Observer” states that “The participation of collectives, targeted groups is controlled by “voice entrepreneurs,” who have clear boundaries of their areas of responsibility, which yard or neighborhood is in the area of responsibility of which group.” It is also claimed that a significant part of those involved in these groups were included in the work for the Repuplican Party of Armenia in the 2017 Yerevan elections.
And Daniel Ioannisyan affirmatively answered whether they would be able to prove the truth of their claims in court with facts. “And we will look at the activities of the “voice entrepreneurs” (that’s how we translated the word “tasovshchik”) after the voting day. I assume that with the results of the voting day, we will have more material to talk about “voice entrepreneurs” and in more detail. Referring to the RA Prime Minister’s statement, “If it turns out that any official of the Republic of Armenia at any level is taking any employee to a rally, meeting, or election using administrative leverage, that official will be fired,” Daniel Ioannisyan said. “Nikol Pashinyan lowers the bar very gently, very gently.” It is an act for which you should be imprisoned for up to 6 years and not dismissed. At the verbal level, he softens the ” dose” of the punishment.
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The other guest of the program, the representative of the “Akanates” (Eyewitness) observation initiative and the Executive Director of the Transparency International Anticorruption Center, Sona Ayvazyan, referred to Tigran Avinyan’s counter-argument that “When we say that in Yerevan we are overhauling polyclinics, sports schools, building schools, overhauling dozens of kindergartens, etc. people work there, many people.
When we say that we are revising the salaries of everyone from the teacher to the director in kindergartens, do you think there are our supporters among those people or not?” And she said: “Theoretically, of course, they could come, and many people may support and are ready to go to the rally. But we see that they come with working groups, and those people who came to support are not particularly happy and excited; the expression on their faces shows that they are paying a debt to someone. They may have set such an obligation before themselves. Maybe they were forced. It is, of course, challenging to verify this and to understand to what extent it was coercion.
The “Akanates” (Eyewitness) observation initiative expressed concern over the misuse of administrative resources by the Civil Contract and called on the RA General Prosecutor’s Office and the Central Election Commission to “conduct a proper investigation and take steps to prevent the possible impact of similar behavior on the election results.” When asked what happened next, Sona Ayvazyan answered: “We still have no response from the law enforcement bodies. In one case, the CEC processed our request regarding Tigran Avinyan’s advertisement posted on the state-funded agency “Armenpress” website, stating that it was pre-election propaganda. But honestly, I don’t remember any other process by law enforcement agencies.”
“During the pre-election campaign, I regret to note this: we can record that fair competition was violated. The good thing is that there was competition, which was quite dynamic: assessed the representative of the “Akanates” (Eyewitness) observation initiative; “Justice was violated precisely because of the abuse of administrative resources, unfortunately. Of course, there are other ways of violation, such as when a political power with great resources invests more resources and distributes more propaganda materials in the wrong places, etc. There are also such manifestations. But the key thing here is the administrative resource because the key thing is, after all, the behavior of the authorities because they are the ones who should set the rules, and they are the ones who should serve as an example. And unfortunately, they are one of the first to break the rules.”
Anna ISRAYELYAN
