ARMENIAN ELECTION CHIEF SATISFIED WITH CAMPAIGN
By Ruben Meloyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
April 18 2007

The chairman of Armenia’s Central Election Commission (CEC), Garegin
Azarian, insisted on Wednesday that it is doing a good job of ensuring
a level playing field and making other preparations for next month’s
parliamentary elections.

Azarian said that the CEC, dominated by President Robert Kocharian’s
political allies, has so far received only ten formal complaints from
political parties and individual candidates vying for the 131 seats
in the National Assembly.

"Although it’s a bit difficult for me to evaluate our work, I would
call it slightly more than satisfactory," he told a news conference.

"I have a stricter approach than you. But ten complaints are OK."

Opposition leaders are far more critical of the CEC’s and other
government bodies’ handling of the election campaign. In particular,
some of them claim to have found glaring inaccuracies in the lists
of the country’s 2.3 million eligible voters.

But Azarian dismissed the complaints, saying that responsibility for
drawing up the voter registry was recently transferred from the CEC
to the Armenian police. He also said that voter lists have already
been posted on the police website and at nearly 2,000 polling stations
across Armenia, arguing that there is sufficient time to examine and
correct them before the May 12 vote.

"We have never had such transparent voter lists before," said the
former Justice Ministry official. "So let us check them and report
all inaccuracies to the police."

Still, Azarian admitted that the registry may still contain the names
of dead people, something which has been a major source of electoral
fraud. "If anybody says that there is a voter registry in the world
that does not include a single dead person I will immediately resign,"
he said.

The voter registration system has been computerized with the help of
the U.S. government. Last week the U.S. embassy in Yerevan donated
45 computers to an Armenian police division in charge of the registry.

Azarian was also asked about media reports that government officials
and representatives of pro-establishment parties are illegally
collecting citizens’ passport numbers with the aim of stealing
their votes. He said the CEC has asked the police and prosecutors to
investigate those reports. They refused to launch criminal inquiries,
citing a lack of factual evidence, he added.

Some opposition parties have also complained that unlike the main
pro-Kocharian parties, they are unable to place their campaign
billboards in Yerevan and other parts of the country. Azarian said
they should redirect their complaints to local governments and private
advertising firms.

In a related development, the CEC on Wednesday took delivery of 5,000
new ballot boxes that will be used during the upcoming elections. The
transparent boxes were purchased from Syria.