Epress.am News from Armenia
One of the most important innovations planned for Armenia’s next parliamentary elections scheduled for April 2, 2017, the installation of surveillance cameras in polling stations to broadcast live the voting process, has failed, Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper reports, noting that the selection process for the company to carry out the project ended on January 18, with only one application having been submitted.
EIC Telecom, an Armenian-Canadian telecommunications company, asked 3,8 million dollars to install the equipment and implement the project, while donors have only allocated 1,6 million euroes for the entire process. Davit Harutyunyan, the minister-chief of Armenia’s government staff, does not rule out that cameras might after all not be installed in polling stations.
“As foreseen by the opposition, the government is completely capable of botching up this innovation by organizing the competition in such a way that only one company submits an application and presents unmeetable terms. Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) party representative Hamlet Abrahaymyan, a member of the commission jointly formed by the opposition and the government, told us that the commission is to hold another meeting with the representatives of the company today to once again discuss the terms of the agreement. They might abandon the idea of installing cameras outside the polling stations and place the equipment only on the premises,” Haykakan Zhamanak writes.