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Transparency International (press release)
April 8 2013
Armenia: Fighting back at the ballot box
By Narine Esmaeili
On March 15th the Supreme Court in Armenia annulled the election
results from Precinct No. 17/5 in Artashat, where I spent an
unforgettable day in mid-February watching ballots being stuffed while
I was physically pinned to a wall by a group of thugs. I never thought
such overt cheating like ballot stuffing would happen. After it all
occurred, I never dreamed that we would get the results of the
precinct disqualified.
I wish I could say that the state moved quickly to act against the
perpetrators; unfortunately, in the month after I was assaulted
physically, I faced further pressure from the authorities to withdraw
my evidence. It was a personal education in politics on the frontier
and one that is still going on.
I am 21 years old and come from Los Angeles, California. I had come to
Armenia as part of the Birthright Armenia program - which sponsors
young people with Armenian roots to visit the homeland of their
grandparents. I chose the internship at Transparency International
Anti-Corruption Center (TI AC) because I wanted to work within the
civil society sphere in my homeland. My goal was to have a better
understanding of the challenges the democratic process in Armenia
faces. I wanted to know how these challenges affect the people and
what steps the citizens of Armenia are ready to make in order to
institute useful change.
The election monitoring was an eye opener.
According to the final results published by the Armenian Central
Electoral Committee, the winner of the general elections on 18
February was the incumbent president Serzh Sargsyan with 58 per cent
of the votes. Raffi Hovhannisyan, the nearest opposition candidate,
received 37 percent of votes.
But this didn't tell the full story. Across the country there were
reports of voting violations, none perhaps as blatant as what I had
experienced. I'm not sure the final result would have been different
if there weren't any electoral fraud but the fact that it could happen
in plain view was disturbing.
Precinct 17/05 is located in the town of Artashat, which has a voting
population of over 2,000. The polling station was in an elementary
school. The poll workers were mostly teachers from the school and as
such they knew almost all the voters. The officials sat behind a table
next to a large plastic, see-through voting box that was sealed on two
sides.
I arrived at the polling station with my partner at 8.00am on a chilly
morning as the first voters were filing in. It soon became clear that
this was not going to be a quiet day. I saw people coming to vote
twice, some with documents that didn't match the register, some who
had clearly been in before. I tried to point this out but was ignored.
But even though votes were being tampered with and cheating was
happening, it clearly wasn't happening fast enough for some, perhaps
because I kept making a fuss. At two-thirty a gang of about 25-30 men
burst into the room. The rules are that there should be no more than
15 voters at any given time. I tried to object but was immediately
held tight by my wrists and pushed up against the wall. I couldn't
take my phone out to catch what happened next on film.
The men cut open the ballot box and stuffed in about 400-500 ballots,
then tried to reseal it. No one complained, even the proxies from
other political parties remained silent. The poll workers and even the
Secretary of the electoral commission helped in the efforts by
assisting with the opening of the ballot box.
I started calling reporters and the police. When the police came they
were accompanied by the town mayor, whose son had been the one to hold
me against the wall. No one owned up to any irregularities. When the
votes were being counted, the election official made a big show of
trying to open the box to prove that the seals were tight. It was
obvious that hundreds of ballots had been put in the box; the tally of
votes counted did not match the tally of registered voters.
I was so shocked I recorded my experiences when I got back to the office:
After the elections, the Special Investigative Service of Armenia
(SIS) lodged a criminal proceeding to investigate the irregularities
at the polling station. I was questioned and incredibly put under
pressure to change my testimony, as if the SIS didn't want to discover
any wrongdoing. At one stage the head of the SIS violently seized the
tape recorder and tried to stop my lawyer, Tigran Yegoryan, from
recording our conversation. Later, SIS representatives continued to
use scare tactics and intimidation to try force me and the lawyers
from the Europe in Law Association and Transparency International
Anticorruption Center to drop our complaint.
That didn't work. The Europe in Law Association and Transparency
International Anticorruption Center issued a statement to the press
and electronic media deploring the unlawful actions of the
investigators of the Special Investigative Service and particularly
those of Andranik Mirzoyan, the Head of the Special Investigative
Service concerning investigation of the cases on election violations.
The SIS hit back with a counter claim and TI AC applied to the Ethics
Commission for High-Ranking Officials. However, there is one piece of
good news. Our media efforts appear to have paid off as far as the
ballot stuffing was concerned. The elections in the precinct No.17/5
were annulled and all the materials concerning the case were sent to
Prosecutor's Office.
So what did I learn from all of this? I learned that Post-Soviet
nations like Armenia have a long way to go in regards to civil
society, democratic development and human rights. It is easy to read
about the challenges such nations face, but to experience them sheds
light on the realities of the country. Even though corruption and
fraudulent actions are rapid within the government and the economic
giants within Armenia, the people are ready to `take back their vote.'
I do believe with the help of organizations like Transparency
International and the mobilization of citizens, Armenia can change for
the better, even if it is step-by-step each year. I hope by the next
elections, overt corruption will be obsolete and that more people will
be willing to be observers and take a stand against any corruption
they see.
http://blog.transparency.org/2013/04/08/armenia-fighting-back-at-the-ballot-box/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
April 8 2013
Armenia: Fighting back at the ballot box
By Narine Esmaeili
On March 15th the Supreme Court in Armenia annulled the election
results from Precinct No. 17/5 in Artashat, where I spent an
unforgettable day in mid-February watching ballots being stuffed while
I was physically pinned to a wall by a group of thugs. I never thought
such overt cheating like ballot stuffing would happen. After it all
occurred, I never dreamed that we would get the results of the
precinct disqualified.
I wish I could say that the state moved quickly to act against the
perpetrators; unfortunately, in the month after I was assaulted
physically, I faced further pressure from the authorities to withdraw
my evidence. It was a personal education in politics on the frontier
and one that is still going on.
I am 21 years old and come from Los Angeles, California. I had come to
Armenia as part of the Birthright Armenia program - which sponsors
young people with Armenian roots to visit the homeland of their
grandparents. I chose the internship at Transparency International
Anti-Corruption Center (TI AC) because I wanted to work within the
civil society sphere in my homeland. My goal was to have a better
understanding of the challenges the democratic process in Armenia
faces. I wanted to know how these challenges affect the people and
what steps the citizens of Armenia are ready to make in order to
institute useful change.
The election monitoring was an eye opener.
According to the final results published by the Armenian Central
Electoral Committee, the winner of the general elections on 18
February was the incumbent president Serzh Sargsyan with 58 per cent
of the votes. Raffi Hovhannisyan, the nearest opposition candidate,
received 37 percent of votes.
But this didn't tell the full story. Across the country there were
reports of voting violations, none perhaps as blatant as what I had
experienced. I'm not sure the final result would have been different
if there weren't any electoral fraud but the fact that it could happen
in plain view was disturbing.
Precinct 17/05 is located in the town of Artashat, which has a voting
population of over 2,000. The polling station was in an elementary
school. The poll workers were mostly teachers from the school and as
such they knew almost all the voters. The officials sat behind a table
next to a large plastic, see-through voting box that was sealed on two
sides.
I arrived at the polling station with my partner at 8.00am on a chilly
morning as the first voters were filing in. It soon became clear that
this was not going to be a quiet day. I saw people coming to vote
twice, some with documents that didn't match the register, some who
had clearly been in before. I tried to point this out but was ignored.
But even though votes were being tampered with and cheating was
happening, it clearly wasn't happening fast enough for some, perhaps
because I kept making a fuss. At two-thirty a gang of about 25-30 men
burst into the room. The rules are that there should be no more than
15 voters at any given time. I tried to object but was immediately
held tight by my wrists and pushed up against the wall. I couldn't
take my phone out to catch what happened next on film.
The men cut open the ballot box and stuffed in about 400-500 ballots,
then tried to reseal it. No one complained, even the proxies from
other political parties remained silent. The poll workers and even the
Secretary of the electoral commission helped in the efforts by
assisting with the opening of the ballot box.
I started calling reporters and the police. When the police came they
were accompanied by the town mayor, whose son had been the one to hold
me against the wall. No one owned up to any irregularities. When the
votes were being counted, the election official made a big show of
trying to open the box to prove that the seals were tight. It was
obvious that hundreds of ballots had been put in the box; the tally of
votes counted did not match the tally of registered voters.
I was so shocked I recorded my experiences when I got back to the office:
After the elections, the Special Investigative Service of Armenia
(SIS) lodged a criminal proceeding to investigate the irregularities
at the polling station. I was questioned and incredibly put under
pressure to change my testimony, as if the SIS didn't want to discover
any wrongdoing. At one stage the head of the SIS violently seized the
tape recorder and tried to stop my lawyer, Tigran Yegoryan, from
recording our conversation. Later, SIS representatives continued to
use scare tactics and intimidation to try force me and the lawyers
from the Europe in Law Association and Transparency International
Anticorruption Center to drop our complaint.
That didn't work. The Europe in Law Association and Transparency
International Anticorruption Center issued a statement to the press
and electronic media deploring the unlawful actions of the
investigators of the Special Investigative Service and particularly
those of Andranik Mirzoyan, the Head of the Special Investigative
Service concerning investigation of the cases on election violations.
The SIS hit back with a counter claim and TI AC applied to the Ethics
Commission for High-Ranking Officials. However, there is one piece of
good news. Our media efforts appear to have paid off as far as the
ballot stuffing was concerned. The elections in the precinct No.17/5
were annulled and all the materials concerning the case were sent to
Prosecutor's Office.
So what did I learn from all of this? I learned that Post-Soviet
nations like Armenia have a long way to go in regards to civil
society, democratic development and human rights. It is easy to read
about the challenges such nations face, but to experience them sheds
light on the realities of the country. Even though corruption and
fraudulent actions are rapid within the government and the economic
giants within Armenia, the people are ready to `take back their vote.'
I do believe with the help of organizations like Transparency
International and the mobilization of citizens, Armenia can change for
the better, even if it is step-by-step each year. I hope by the next
elections, overt corruption will be obsolete and that more people will
be willing to be observers and take a stand against any corruption
they see.
http://blog.transparency.org/2013/04/08/armenia-fighting-back-at-the-ballot-box/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress