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On May 4^th, by the initiative of the Partnership for Open Society Coalition 5 NGOs (Yerevan Press Club ,  Transparent International Anti corruption center, «Asparez» Journalists’ Club , Armenian Helsinki Committee, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor) presented problems and violations recorded during the pre-election period by them.

We had a more “exuberant” result than expected but there still are many voters who are not determined yet

Boris Navasardyan, Head of Yerevan Press Club, expected that press/media working during these elections will be more balanced than usual because , first, the evaluation of international institutions is very important for us, and second, TV companies have realized that in order to compete with internet media, they must work in a more open and independent way.

“Despite our modest expectations, we had a more exuberant result”, this was the conclusion of the Head of Yerevan Press Club as a result of the monitoring of the airing of 8 Armenian broadcast media.

The organization publishes its interim reports every 10 days and these reports record that TV companies have begun to work more in a more balanced way.

“The broadcast media offered an open platform for political powers, and candidates to present their programs, to debate and so on. It is another thing that the political powers were not ready to use the platform adequately and unfortunately we can say that the content was of little help to the voters in making a choice”, says Boris Navasardyan.

Only one day is left until the voting, however, according to him, there are still many people who are not determined.

The head of Yerevan Press Club emphasizes also the provision of the open platform by the TV companies to all levels of society and political powers in the post-election period. According to him, this requires more professional work and only in this case we can say that serious and abrupt changes took place in the information field of Armenia.

The voting right of the RA citizens who are abroad was violated

Levon Barseghyan, head of Asparez Gyumri Journalists Club thinks that the Armenian Authorities is discriminating between voters declared legally equal by the Constitution.

“600-700 thousand RA citizens living abroad and having the right to vote were deprived of the right to vote. This is a discriminative attitude. And it is a double discriminative attitude that more than 230 thousand citizens who work in diplomatic representations, however, will have an opportunity to participate in the voting,” notes Levon Barseghyan.

According to him the authorities did not want to install cameras in the polling stations to ensure transparency and to record the entire process of voting and ballot calculation on the grounds that it can be done by reporters, observers and proxies.

“The meaning of our recommendation was that the state itself had to take on the responsibility to ensure transparency, which would at least release the polling stations from election crimes, which we witnessed several years ago: ballot-stuffing before the international observers, beating, violence towards reporters, repeated voting, filling in the list of electors for the voters, who did not turn up to vote and so on and so forth,” says Barseghyan.

Their other recommendation, which was also rejected, referred to excluding the educational sphere (schools, colleges, and universities) from election processes, so that leaders, employees and pupils and students of educational establishments «are not used» by the candidates in power and are not involved in campaigns.

Asparez Journalists Club conducted inquiries a month ago and discovered 32 of 42 headmasters of Gyumri state schools and high schools of, and 26 of 29 headmasters of educational establishments are members of the Republican Party of Armenia and half of them became members of the party during the last 10 years.

«That is, according to my evaluation, there is a terrible abuse of administrative resource. To continue their work people are doomed to become members of the ruling party»,- concludes Levon Barseghyan.

The cases of abuse of administrative resource are more dangerous in Armenia

According to Varuzhan Hoktanyan, Executive Director of Transparency International Anticorruption Centre abuse of administrative resource in Armenia is different from the international experience (for instance, use of service vehicle by an official for the election campaign) and more dangerous and has more unpleasant manifestations.

One of them, according to Hoktanyan, is the fact of ubiquitous partisanship of educational and healthcare institutions and use of these resources for campaigning.

«The other unpleasant and widespread phenomenon is that regional governors and village leaders are assigned to ensure a certain number of votes in their district. Such abuses have a rather serious impact on the elections»,- he states.

Transparency International Anti-corruption Center compared the RA permanent population based on the data of the National Statistic Service for 2010-2011 and the list of electors. It was discovered that in 34 communities of the republic the number of voters registered in the list of electors is more than the number of permanent population.

The day of the voting will be peaceful if …

Avetik Ishkhanyan, Chairman of Helsinki Committee Armenia has stated several times that if we evaluate the elections, then we must evaluate not only the voting day or pre-election and post-election months but also the level of ensuring rights and freedoms during the period from the previous till the next elections.

“You all know the condition of Armenia during the last 5 years,” notes Ishkhanyan.

Avetik Ishkhanyan is concerned about the fact that people do not complain about election violations or when reporting they avoid to mention their name, which is a sign of fear.

“Experience shows that the freer the country, the more there are complaints. If there are no complaints it does not necessarily mean that there are no violations or an atmosphere of fear, on the contrary, the complaints are few in dictatorial states,” he says.

Chairman of Helsinki Committee Armenia has an impression that everything is done in Armenia to ensure that everything goes according to the plan in the polling stations on the voting day.

«It is difficult to say whether it will work out or not. It depends on the use of resources before the voting day. If their calculations turn out right, and they are able to ensure the desired index, the voting will be normal, if it isnot provided, to tell the truth, I am worried. That anything can happen»,- says Ishkhanyan.

Trust towards fairness if election processes is small

The main concern of Artur Sakunts, Chairman of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly – Vanadzor is the inactivity of the law-enforcement bodies in regards to election violations. “What have law-enforcement bodies done to reveal and prevent charitable giving,” he asks a rhetorical question.

According to Sakunts, the most legitimate elections in Armenia took place while having the worst law. «It seems today that we have the best legislation/law but the trust towards free and fair election process is very low»,- he thinks.

According to the Chairman of HCA Vanadzor, observation mission is vulnerable from the legal point because the Electoral Code defines that violation of law by even one observer may become a basis for depriving all the observers of the given organization of observation right but the violation of law by representatives of the party does not give grounds to deprive the entire party of membership in the electoral commissions.

Author: Mery Alexanyan
Source: www.hra.am