Паст инфо

“The Presidential elections of February 18 were unprecedented for the whole history of the Republic of Armenia in the term of collective mistrust of the population towards the authorities. 

 

Despite the consistent efforts of the authorities to minimize the competition and assure outwardly calmness, as well as the reproduction and liquidation of the power formed with 2008 election violations, the Armenian citizens with voting expressed their mistrust towards the authorities and in numerous urban and rural polling stations the oppositional representative Raffi Hovhannisyan received more votes than the incumbent president Serzh Sargsyan”. 

 

We, the citizens of the civil society involved in the development of democracy and human rights, think that the official results announced by CEC do not correspond with the reality and once more bring to the failure of the formation of the legitimate institute of presidency. 

 

The observations carried out by the civil organizations show that the whole election process from the pre-election process and the voting process was accompanied by the election violations implemented by the authorizes with the abuse of administrative resources, election bribes, threats, stuffing, voting instead of the absent citizens and the falsification of the final results, the proves of which are available in many facts, as well as the videos presented in mass media. The members of electoral commissions directly became participants in the process of election violations and the law enforcement agencies showed absolute inaction to prevent and eliminate fraud. However, it is evident that large-scale violations significantly affected the outcome of the elections, which are shown in the official data analysis, including the comparison of the results of voting in the observed and not observed stations. 

 

It is to be noted that the promotion of democracy as an international election observer missions preliminary estimates do not reflect the real processes and largely driven by political motives.

 

It should be noted that the preliminary assessments of the international observers don’t reflect the real election processes and are mostly dependent on political factors. 

 

Such assessments are instilling lack of confidence among the public, not only towards the European observer mission, but in general, towards the international standards of human rights and international standards for democratic institutions.

 

The base of the democratic state is the formation of the government by the nation and the trust of the people towards the election processes. The opinion of the Armenian voters, as well as the massive demonstration and civil disobedience after the February elections once more prove that the citizens do not believe in the honesty of the elections and the legality of the results. 

 

Considering the confidence of the public in the election process as critical, we demand that the RA authorities publish the signed lists assuring the Armenian voters that their and the absent votes were abused and show the legitimacy of their power. Otherwise Armenia's citizens have every reason to consider that the 2013 presidential elections were falsified in order to maintain power at any cost. "

 

The statement was signed by "Transparency International Anti-corruption Center",  Vanadzor Office of the “Helsinki Citizens' Assembly” NGO, "Asbarez" club of journalists” NGO,  “Helsinki Committee of Armenia" NGO, "Partnership for Democracy" NGO, "Women's Resource Center" NGO, "Open Society Foundations - Armenia" Foundation, "We Plus" NGO, "Public Information and need of Knowledge" NGO, "Rights without Borders" NGO,"Ecolur" NGO, Committee to Protect freedom of Speech NGO, "Arevamanuk” family and child care fund,"Journalists for human Rights NGO, Warranty"Civil Society Center, "New generation" NGO "Sotsioskop" NGO, "Environmental law" NGO, "Rule of Law" human Rights NGO, "Family and community" NGO.