U.S. State Department: Basically elections in Armenia were held in compliance with international standards

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “We congratulate the Armenian people on their parliamentary elections and share with the international observers the view that the election infrastructure has been greatly improved and that this is a step in the right direction towards meeting international standards,” U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey stated. He expressed hope, however, that the Government of Armenia will aggressively investigate allegations that are there of electoral wrongdoing and prosecute people in accordance with Armenian law. “So all and all, I think this is an improvement over past elections; though certainly it did not fully meet international standards. There’s still some ways to go before Armenia would have an election that fully meets all the international standards,” Tom Casey stated.

“Aravot” editorializes that money was key to the electoral success of the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). “There seem to have been no serious incidents in polling stations during both voting and counting of ballots, which no doubt is a positive phenomenon,” editorializes the paper. “But even to say that the elections moved a little closer to European standards would be a mockery of those standards. For elections is not just voting. Elections are a free expression of citizens’ will, and it doesn’t really matter whether that will was strangled by ballot stuffing, violence or money.”

“Aravot” also says the Armenian opposition deserved to have been defeated. “Both the radical and non-radical opposition forces have done everything to achieve the results announced today,” concludes the paper.

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Writing from his prison cell, the editor of “Zhamanak Yerevan,” Arman Babajanian, says multiple voting was widespread on Saturday. “The mechanism is quite clear,” he says. “A citizen eligible to vote enters a polling station, presents a passport, but signs for somebody else, presumably a person who will not go to the polls because of being absent from Armenia or dead. Then the same voter again comes to the polling station a couple of hours later, again presents his passport, and then votes in place of another absent voter.”

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“If some politicians try to artificially destabilize the political situation, I’m sure they will not achieve anything,” HHK spokesman Eduard Sharmazanov tells “Hayots Ashkhar.” “The people are simply indifferent to them. And nothing is worse than indifference.”