Artur Sakunts, “Certain Approaches of the CoE Congress are subjective”
09:38, October 31, 2013 | News | Civil Control, Local Democracy
To the question of Aravot.am whether the observations of the CoE Congress related to the elections of Yerevan city Avagani held on May 5, Chairman of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Artur Sakunts replied, “One part of the CoE Congress observations is grounded while the other is not. Certain approaches are subjective”. By continuing Mr. Sakunts stated, “The results compiled based on those observations are of greater importance. I do not understand they do not actually master or the information was provided as such. We have not met with the Congress in person”.
It is worth noting that the report on the elections of Yerevan Avagani members held on May 5 was on today’s agenda of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe 25th session as well as the adoption of the formula and the recommendation in this relation. The CoE Congress particularly finds it problematic the existence of video cameras at polling stations, the active process of video shooting and the great number of domestic observers.
With this regard, Artur Sakunts pointed out, “the problem is not the number of observers, but the fact that the institute or the mandate is in most of the cases used as a change to act on behalf of a proxy. The problem lies in the quality of the observers and the organized work”.
The CoE Congress found the use of cell phones as problematic especially during the vote counting. Regarding this Artur Sakunts stated, “They are quite right, cell phones are used to report the data of citizens who have not come to vote so that to apprehend the absentees. But the fact that the data during the vote counting are explicitly reported is a violation of the natural course of the voting procedure. It relates to the ruling party, so that data are compared and a final index is yielded, which is desirable.”
The CoE Congress has also made a recommendation regarding the existence of video cameras. Artur Sakunts responded to as follows: “Our legislation allows video recording. It is only the voting booth that is prohibited to record. It is an approach related to specific issues, which cannot be accepted as a version of systemic resolution. I mean the cases, when psychological pressure is exerted against the person through video recording. Therefore, we should not leaded by prohibition. The method of cutting the head instead of curing it is unacceptable.”