European observers shocked Armenian official

The Chairperson of Armenian Delegation to PACE, Armenian ruling Republican Party MP Davit Harutyunyan is shocked by the statements of European observers, reports Armenian News-NEWS.am.

“I was shocked by the form and substance of the press release of the PACE preelectoral delegation to Armenia and feel obliged to address all three negative assessments it contains,” stressed Harutyunyan in his letter to the chairperson of the PACE ad hoc Committee for observation of Presidential elections in Armenia Karin Woldseth and President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Jean-Claude Mignon.

The first “crucial matter of concern for the delegation is the continuing substantial inaccuracies in the voter list.” According to Armenian official, such negative assessment was pre cooked even before the delegation’s meeting with the main body responsible for handling the electoral register, the Police, as the written press release in English and Armenian was distributed immediately after that meeting.

“In fact this negative assessment was copy-pasted from the notorious report of the delegation led by Baroness Nicholson on Parliamentary elections in Armenia in May 2012. Since we considered the allegations of that report as fake and ignoring any reasonable explanations rendered by the Armenian authorities, after the Parliamentary elections of 2012 we invited PACE to undertake a post-electoral mission in order to verify the accuracy of the voters’ lists 1 . Unfortunately the organization did not accept our invitation, but rather decided to continue the same path – making unsubstantiated and false accusations on the quality of the voters’ list,” stresses Harutyunyan.

In his letter he addresses the main concerns of the CoE observers, in particular:

a. The large number of passports issued in 2011-2012 is simply due to the fact that Armenia introduced national passports two decades ago back in 1992 with a 10-year validity period.

b. The increase of the numbers of voters by 157 thousands between two previous national elections as opposed to the decrease of demographic indicators is conditioned by three major factors: the large number of those born between 1990 and 1994 turning into electoral age which is overweighting the death rate (142 thousands for the period 2008-2012) for about 270 thousand2; abrupt increase of number of dual citizens (43,800); and new stricter requirements to passport holders to indicate permanent residency address, which was not the case in the past.

“Of course for any country it is theoretically impossible to eliminate absolutely all inaccuracies in the voters’ lists. However, Armenian authorities eliminated them to the highest extent possible,” notes Harutyunyan.

Moreover, the legislation itself contained sufficient safeguards. Any person may check at any time (irrespective of elections) whether he or she or any other person is in a voters’ register or not. The voters’ lists are posted for public scrutiny at polling stations 40 days before elections and they are also made available for download on the Internet in a user-friendly format. Any person, party, NGO or other organization have the opportunity during 35 days to formally request the initiation of an administrative procedure to eliminate inaccuracies. The final lists are published two days before each election and they shall also be available for download on the Internet, reads the letter by the Armenian MP.

“Any objective observer definitely would conclude that Armenia achieved an outstanding progress following recommendations from the Venice Commission and OSCE/ODIHR to compile an accurate voter register,” mentions Harutyunyan. “I can insist without any doubt that voter register of Armenia is one of the most accurate voter registers among Council of Europe member states.”

Concerning the second negative assessment, a decision of number of major political parties not to present presidential candidates because of their lack of trust in the conduct of the election, and the lack of interest and confidence in the electoral process by the general public, Harutyunyan writes that this assessment was paraphrased from the previous ungrounded report of Baroness Nicholson.

“It is worth to mention that some international observers attending recent parliamentary elections noted that there is no generalized lack of trust towards election and this is confirmed by the unprecedented level of participation 62.8% of the total number of eligible voters. Comparative study of voter participation across member states of the Council of Europe could help draw certain conclusions,” reads the Armenian official’s letter.

According to him, three presidential candidates – MP Hrant Bagratyan (former prime minister, leader of the Freedom party), Paruyr Hayrikyan (former Soviet dissident), and Raffi Hovhannisyan (former minister of foreign affairs, leader of the Heritage party) – are prominent public and political figures.

“So these elections are as competitive as the previous elections,” Harutyunyan stresses. “Unfortunately the delegation has either failed to check or has preferred not to refer to the official explanations of those ‘expected presidential candidates’ about the reasons why they decided not to participate. For example, the first President of Armenia, currently the leader of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) officially announced in December 2012 that he was not going to make another bid to return to power in February’s presidential election citing his age as the reason for his decision.”

Concerning the third negative assessment, confusion about the right to vote for Armenians living abroad, Harutyunyan stresses that this suggestion is “well beyond the framework of the observer mission.”

According to the MP, as a matter of internal policy, Armenia has chosen to allow exercise of national electoral rights only domestically.

“In no way does this constitute a violation of the right to vote and it is within the margin of appreciation of any state to decide on the matter. For some reason, about which we can only guess, these facts have been conveniently overlooked by the delegation,” stresses Davit Harutyunyan.

According to him, the press release by European observers contains “false accusations and exaggerated concerns with fairness and proper nature of the elections, thus affecting public trust, confidence and interest in elections thus undermining the democratic process in Armenia.”

“I strongly believe that observer missions should be conducted with the strict application of two most important principles: fairness and factual base. Unfortunately this press release failed on both accounts. The issue at stake is the credibility of the PACE observation mission,” concludes Harutyunyan.