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“The 2008 presidential election will confirm that improving the electoral processes and conducting democratic elections in Armenia are already a tradition,” this is an excerpt from President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan’s campaign program.

Analyzing the situation five years later, can we claim that the President of the Republic of Armenia kept his promise? www.aravot.am asked this question to a number of experts dealing with electoral processes.

Artur Sakunts, Chairman of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor, noted during a conversation with us that Serzh Sargsyan should have first of all assessed the 2008 presidential elections, which he didn’t do. Then he went into details: “If he promised that, and it was in his election program, then considering the 2008 election, he didn’t keep his promise, because not only did he fail to take any stance, but he also considered it to be normal that he came to govern as a result of such elections. The elections for the city council that took place in Yerevan afterwards were an absolute shame. I was in the electoral district of Malatia-Sebastia as an observer, there was just total pressure on voters, fraud, ballot stuffing etc. Or elections in no. 10 electoral district in 2010, where Nikol Pashinyan was running, where we carried out monitoring again – here there were again violations, pressure, and fraud. This happened during Serzh Sargsyan’s presidency. Manifestations of aggressiveness, pressure, also during the latest parliamentary election, in the electoral district where Samvel Alexanyan was running and in other electoral districts, the spread of fraud during the election campaign and on the election day…. Although violence was not like the violence during the elections for the Yerevan City Council, but the problem of using the administrative resource wasn’t overcome in any elections. There was an inappropriate response to alerts of election bribes; investigations were not conducted.”

Enumerating the above-mentioned, A. Sakunts stated: “This long observation allows me to insist and reason that Serzh Sargsyan did not keep and couldn’t have kept his promise, since one should first of all have fully assessed the 2008 presidential election. There were prisoners of conscience during his very presidency, who are free now not due to justice, but as a result of amendments to the amnesty law.”

Harutyun Hambardzumyan, the head of the Choice is Yours NGO, stated: “I wouldn’t say that the president kept or did not keep his promise by 100 percent. But it is a fact that we made progress in this elections compared to the previous one. The progress is that the flagrant violations that took place in the past – for example, ballot stuffing, violating the rights of observers and proxies, fights in polling stations – yes, they happened, but were not so wide-spread. Those happened in the polling stationss of Malatia-Sebastia and Spitak, but if we analyze 1960 polling stations, they account for a small percentage.”