‘Civilized parliamentary election’ camouflages mass falsifications and
violations, representative of international organisation says

ArmInfo News Agency
2007-05-14 14:28:00

"Civilized parliamentary election" camouflages mass falsifications and
violations, Amalia Kostanyan, chairman of Transparency- Armenia, said
at a press conference, Monday.

"The country’s election system is controlled by high-ranking
officials. This has become a reason for open bribery of voters,
including by political figures," she said. On May 12 people informed
some public organizations that the persons representing some parties
bribed voters, she said. However, the information was anonymous due to
the atmosphere of overall fear reigning in the country. At the same
time, there were people ready to sell their votes for a definite
amount of money. For instance, she mentioned a call by a woman who
plead a public organization to help her get a 15,000 AMD bribe as, in
her words, "the bribe came short when it was her turn to get it."
"Thus, although politicians speak of democratic values and free and
transparent election, in reality, we become witnesses of their
quite-opposite behavior," A. Kostanyan said.

According to a sociological poll conducted by Transparency
International Center for Anti-corruption Research and Initiatives, the
election system in Armenia was the most corrupted in 2006, 73.9% of
respondents say. They mentioned imperfect legislation, lack of
punishment mechanisms and public tolerance to this phenomenon as main
reasons of wide-spread corruption.