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Ruling Party Sweeps Victory In Flawed Yerevan Election

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  • Ruling Party Sweeps Victory In Flawed Yerevan Election

    RULING PARTY SWEEPS VICTORY IN FLAWED YEREVAN ELECTION

    http://www.asbarez.com/2009/06/01/ruling -party-claims-landslide-victory-in-yerevan-polls-a s-opposition-local-monitors-cry-foul
    Jun 1, 2009

    YEREVAN (Combined Sources) - President Serzh Sarkisian's Republican
    Party of Armenia has swept to a landslide victory in municipal
    elections in Yerevan, which the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
    and other opposition groups have denounced as flawed.

    The Armenian Revolutionary Federation Supreme Council of Armenia
    issued an announcement Monday calling the elections "deeply flawed"
    and said it would not recognize the results. "We considered the
    Yerevan municipal elections as an opportunity for strengthening the
    political structure, creating a new government model in the capital,
    overcoming the enmity and divisiveness that resulted from the 2008
    presidential elections and establishing unity," said the announcement.

    "We also believed that fair elections would strengthen the foundations
    of democracy in the country and we could prove that we are able to make
    progress. Unfortunately, that did not happen," added the announcement.

    "Once again, what happened was more of the same. Again, local and
    oligarchic clout, bribery and the use of the administrative apparatus
    played a role in the elections," asserted the party, adding that
    unfortunately, administrative pressure from the authorities, vote
    bribes and demagoguery still plague the election process in Armenia.

    As such the ARF Supreme Council of Armenia said it would not sign
    the final results and urged the authorities to declare the elections
    invalid in the precincts that more visibly violated voting procedures.

    The Results

    The Central Election Commission announced early on June 1 that with all
    of the ballots counted, the Republican's won 47.4 percent of the vote,
    enough to reinstall its top candidate, Gagik Beglarian, as Yerevan's
    mayor. The Prosperous Armenia Party, one of the Republican Party's
    two junior partners in the ruling coalition, came in a distant second
    with 22.7 percent.

    Trailing Prosperous Armenia was the opposition Armenian National
    Congress, which the official results showed getting 17.4 percent of
    the vote, well below its expectations.

    County of Law, the third party represented in Sarkisian's government,
    finished fourth with only 5.2 percent. The Armenian Revolutionary
    Federation, which was also part of the governing coalition until
    recently received about 4.7 percent, according to the commission.

    With the vote threshold for single parties seeking to gain seats
    in Yerevan's Council of Elders set at 7 percent, this means that
    neither County of Law nor the ARF will be represented in the new
    municipal assembly.

    The Central Election Commission put voter turnout at over 53
    percent. The highest turnout, more than 65 percent, was registered
    in the city's Malatia-Sebastia district, scene of the largest number
    of voting irregularities reported by the Armenian opposition, media,
    and independent observers.

    The first vote results showing a Republican victory were released at
    around midnight following opposition allegations of widespread fraud
    during the May 31 voting.

    Opposition Complains

    Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian's Armenian National Congress
    complained of systemic fraud, vote rigging, and intimidation after
    the closure of the polls and announced late Monday that they will
    refuse their seats won in the newly elected City Council, effectively
    dropping the 65 member City Council to 52 members.

    This assessment of the election administration was shared by the
    opposition Heritage party as well, which did not contest the vote
    but closely monitored its conduct.

    "Our assessment is highly negative," Armen Martirosian, Heritage's
    parliamentary leader, told RFE/RL. "We have botched the first election
    of the Yerevan council in a disgraceful fashion."

    Martirosian decried "widespread" bussing of allegedly bribed voters by
    the two main governing parties. He said Heritage has also registered
    "many instances of violence" and ballot-box stuffing. "I think the
    police performance today was a disaster," he added.

    Republicans Say 'Free and Fair'

    For its part, the Republican Party described the polls as largely
    free and fair. "Yes, there were some shortcomings, but by and large
    ballot stuffing, multiple voting, and other problems that existed
    in the electoral process were essentially absent today," said Eduard
    Sharmazanov, the Republican spokesman.

    This view was echoed by the election commission, which is dominated
    by government loyalists. Speaking on state television, its chairman,
    Garegin Azarian, said the commission has investigated the opposition
    allegations and most of them proved false.

    The Prosecutor-General's Office similarly said it has looked into
    some of the vote-buying claims and found them baseless.

    President Hails Outcome

    President Sarkisian, meanwhile, welcomed the course and official
    results of the weekend elections, saying that they marked a "serious
    step forward" in the elimination of Armenia's culture of electoral
    fraud.

    In a written address to the nation, Sarkisian congratulated the
    governing Republican and Prosperous Armenia parties as well as the
    opposition Armenian National Congress on gaining seats in Yerevan's
    new municipal council. He also paid tribute to four other parties
    that failed to win representation in the council despite conducting
    what he described as "quality election campaigns."

    "The May 31 elections and the entire pre-election period demonstrated
    that we have managed to solve a considerable part of long-standing
    problems existing in electoral processes and moved forward in solving
    others," said Sarkisian. "As a result, these elections were a truly
    serious step forward."

    The president further acknowledged violations in "some polling
    stations" and said he will seek to ensure that "all the guilty are
    identified and strictly punished."

    In what may have been a related development, Armenia's Office of the
    Prosecutor-General urged the Central Election Commission (CEC) to
    order vote recounts in eight precincts in Yerevan's Malatia-Sebastia
    district, scene of the largest number of fraud instances reported on
    election day.

    A spokeswoman for the law-enforcement agency, Sona Truzian, told
    RFE/RL that the recommendation stems from media reports of ballot
    box stuffing reported from the area. "Also, the prosecutor-general
    instructed the launch of a criminal case in connection with media
    reports on ballot stuffing and violence against journalists and
    observers in various Malatia-Sebastia precincts," she said.

    Truzian said the moves came despite the absence of any written
    election-related complaints lodged with the prosecutors. Opposition
    leaders say such complaints are meaningless because of what they see
    as law-enforcement bodies' complicity in vote rigging.

    That there were serious problems in Malatia-Sebastia was acknowledged
    on Monday by Abram Bakhchagulian, a member of the CEC affiliates
    with the ruling Republican Party. But he said it is too early to say
    whether they had a serious impact on overall vote results.

    Council of Europe Praises

    International observers, meanwhile, said the election met European
    standards although there were some problems.

    "This election was a step forward in comparison with elections held
    in September 2008," Nigel Mermagen, head of the Council of Europe
    observation mission, told a news conference, Reuters reported.

    "Some shortcomings were recorded," he said, adding, however, that
    "the overall organization of the elections has been broadly carried
    out in compliance with European standards.

    The Council of Europe's Congress of Local and Regional Authorities
    (CLRAE) deployed the largest international mission, consisting of
    12 members, to monitor the polls. They claimed to have visited about
    half of more than 400 polling stations across Yerevan on election day.

    Mermagen did not elaborate on irregularities witnessed by members
    of his team, saying that they will be detailed in a final election
    report to be submitted to the CLRAE by October. More importantly,
    he made clear that the Europeans believe those irregularities did
    not call into question the legitimacy of the official vote results
    that gave a landslide victory to the Republicans.

    "They had some influence on the final results but not to the extent
    that the legitimacy of the final results was prejudiced, as far as we
    could see at this moment in time," said the Council of Europe official.

    Major Armenian elections have traditionally been monitored by
    hundreds of observers deployed by the Organization for Security
    and Cooperation in Europe. The OSCE and its Warsaw-based Office of
    Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) did not observe
    the Yerevan polls, citing a lack of a formal invitation from the
    Armenian authorities.

    Local Monitors Cry Foul

    The initial findings of the Council of Europe's observer mission
    were in sharp contrast to widespread vote buying and other fraud
    reported by opposition representatives, mass media and Armenian
    civic groups that monitored the vote. "I have a single word for
    what we experienced yesterday: shock," said Amalia Kostanian of the
    Center for Regional Development (CRD), the Armenian affiliate of the
    Berlin-based Transparency International. "We are shocked. And we are
    people who have long monitored elections."

    The CRD and the Vanadzor branch of the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly
    jointly deployed 60 observers in Yerevan's Malatia-Sebastia district,
    one of the main trouble spots during Sunday's voting. Kostanian said
    their detailed election report will be released soon.

    As Mermagen presented the largely positive findings of the Council
    of Europe observer mission, he was subjected to angry questionings
    by some of the journalists present at his news conference. One of
    them pointed out that the May 31 elections saw a record-high number
    of reported attacks on journalists.

    Another journalist, who was reportedly assaulted by government
    loyalists at a Malatia-Sebastia polling station visited by Mermagen,
    accused the observer mission chief of being "indifferent" to fraud
    and violence reports and avoiding conversations with opposition
    proxies. She even suggested that the observers prejudged the
    authorities' handling of the elections even before election day.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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