IYC: Referendum Failed To Meet International Standards
IYC Press Conference, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2005
RFE/RL reports on the press conference given today by the largest local election observation NGO in Armenia, It’s Your Choice, which I also attended. Coincidentally, I spent eight hours visiting polling stations on Sunday with IYC’s head, Harutiun Hambartsumian, and so can back up most of what the organization’s report on the conduct of the referendum says.
“Serious violations of the electoral process, illegal voting and especially ballot box stuffing registered on November 27 … do not allow us to recognize the referendum on amendments to Armenia’s constitution as democratic and meeting international standards,” the independent group called It’s Your Choice concluded in a report.
The 12-page report details numerous irregularities that were reported by some 4,000 observers deployed by It’s Your Choice on voting day. Its chairman, Harutiun Hambartsumian, said they visited nearly 60 percent of the polling stations across Armenia.
[…]
The group claimed that ballot box stuffing was a key reason for an unusually high voter turnout reported by the Armenian authorities. “There was more ballot stuffing on November 27 than during the presidential elections of 2003,” Hambartsumian charged at a news conference. He said in one polling station in Yerevan the number of ballots cast was ten times higher than the number of voters counted by It’s Your Choice observers.
“Of course the violations affected the referendum outcome,” added Hambartsumian. “To what extent? Let the Central Election Commission determine that.”
In a breathtaking display of cynicism that typifies his adminstration, the Armenian President is acting as if nothing out of the ordinary happened on Sunday. Well, despite the fact that democratic elections do not exist in Armenia, they were out of the ordinary in so much that never before has anyone seen falsification on this scale before — and that’s saying something.
Anyway, It’s Your Choice has a web site at http://www.iyc.am.
