Epress.am News from Armenia
Given the practices of past years, the 43.65% participation rate at the current municipal elections is quite high, reported Levon Barseghyan, Chairperson of Gyumri’s “Asparez” Journalist Club and member of the “Witness” election observing mission that observed Yerevan municipal elections at a press conference at Media Center.
“Political demagogues will now start nagging that 43.65% participation is not really an indicator of high-quality elections. In comparison to last year’s elections, these were by 2.5 percent higher or in other words, 25.000 more people participated in the elections. But in reality, when one goes deeper into what stands in the background of these elections, one can see that what was missing were the squads of republicans who’d forcibly bring people to the elections, the criminals who normally are engaged in organizing the elections, that bring ill elderly people almost on their hands to use their votes for desired outcomes. There were no pressures on the free will of voters. It is difficult to precisely evaluate how many votes these forced votes have been in the past, but according to my own estimations, it is around 150.000 votes. If we add this to the rate of participation, I think we might even record a rate of 63-65 percent,” mentioned Barseghyan, adding that according to various estimations, about 15֊20 percent of registered votes of Yerevan were abroad.
Barseghyan also stated with irony that those deceased decided not to participate in the current elections for unknown reasons.
Calling the elections of the past non-elections, Barseghyan stated that these elections were radically different from those held in the past 20 and more years, as these were different by qualitative terms. There were no accumulations of people, no instructed voting, no psychological pressures, no alerts of electoral bribing etc.
“These elections come to prove that the former regime was unable to exterminate human dignity and the aspiration for freedom. These elections will be remembered for a long time. This was the first test after the revolution, and we have to regard these elections as such in the logic of the revolution,” said Barseghyan.
The election observing mission has summarized the preliminary results of election observation, namely, the process of voting, the pre-electoral activities and the calculation of votes. The predominant number of violations in the pre-electoral process related to issues such as missing ramps for wheelchairs, inappropriate furnishing of the ballot rooms.
While speaking about the work of the electoral committee, Sona Ayvazyan, member of the electoral mission, mentioned that the quality of their work did not grow in reality, however committee members were able to operate in a more free and unrestricted environment.
Ayvazyan also spoke about the violations that their mission had recorded, namely about 232 names of voters were missing from the voters lists, there were about 705 instances when the electronic machines had problems. About 40 cases when voters were aided were recorded, 35 cases when confidentiality of voting was violated. 26 voters recorded that it was signed in the voters lists in front of their names, with 1 of them unable to cast a ballot eventually. There were issues with the electronic devices in 18 districts.
Davit Petrosyan, also a member of the election observing mission, member of “ReStart” civic initiative, highlighted the work of the police. According to him, while in the past elections observers would need to turn to the chairperson of the electoral committee in order to engage the police in carrying out their obligations, this time the police were more ready to duly intervene. “There were groups of police outside the precinct walking around and trying to see if there were issues. I think the fact that there was no accumulation of people outside the voting precincts was due to the work of the police.” ։
Petrosyan also mentioned that after these elections, we have to continue to speak about the role of elections. “Of course, a revolution has taken place, it is impossible not to notice changes, however we still do not have a mentality embedded in people that elections are the way to exercise their own political power.”