Паст инфо

Below you can find the full version of the letter. 

 

Dear colleagues,

 

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.

 

 

Such negative assessment was pre cooked even before the delegation’s meeting with the main body responsible for handling the electoral register – the Police: 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. 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.

 

Let me once again address the main “facts” which were usually mentioned as a matter of concern.

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.

 

Several other concerns about the voters' lists, mentioned previously, like high number of voters registered under the same address, people registered in demolished or earthquake damaged buildings, were thoroughly addressed by the authorities after the Parliamentary elections of May 2012 and are basically resolved.

 

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. 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 userfriendly 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.

 

Moreover, on January 9, 2013 the Police established a hot line for reports on inaccuracies of the voters’ lists. Until the day of publication of the press release only 22 reports were submitted, none of them related to the inaccuracies, but rather requesting expert advice.

 

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. 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.

 

The second negative assessment:

 

 

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.

 

Moreover the political parties and blocks now challenging the conduct of the elections (Prosperous Armenia, ARF, ANC) actively participated in the parliamentary elections held in 2012 and gained seats in the National Assembly. “Prosperous Armenia” gained more than 30% of votes cast and is the second largest faction of the National Assembly. ARF several times gained seats in the parliamentary elections, including in 2012. ANC in the last parliamentary elections gained more than 7% of votes cast. Three presidential candidates – Hrant Bagratyan (former prime minister, leader of the Freedom party, currently Member of the National Assembly, represents the same

ANC faction), Paruyr Hayrikyan (former Soviet dissident, one of the founders and most active leaders of the democratic movement in the Soviet Union) and Raffi Hovhannisyan (former minister of foreign affairs, leader of the Parliamentary party Heritage) are prominent public and political figures, so these elections are as competitive as the previous elections.

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.

 

The third negative assessment:

 

 

Again, this idea was copy pasted from the unfair report of Baroness Nicholson. Although this suggestion is well beyond the framework of the observer mission, I will address it in substance. As a matter of internal policy, Armenia has reasonably 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.

The press release states: “The delegation emphasized that citizens’ trust must be restored as elections are essential for democratic development”. At the same time the press release 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. It is certainly protestable when the mission called to safeguard and support democracy in fact undermines it.

 

I also very much regret that this pre-electoral statement was disseminated before any preliminary reports were published by other observation groups, including the ODIHR team, which is functioning in Armenia on a longer-term basis. I also find it regretful, that the delegation has preferred not to share with the Armenian partners the advance copy of the text before dissemination, which is a regular practice for the electoral observation teams.

 

Taking into account the forthcoming electoral observer mission, I insist that urgent attention must be paid to issue of ensuring strict application of principles of fairness and factual base by the expected mission in order to avoid any further recreations of the notorious report of Baroness Nicholson".