THERE WERE VIOLATIONS, BUT NOT ESSENTIAL
By N. Petrosian

AZG Armenian Daily
15/05/2007

On may 13 "The Vote is YOURS!" NGO published the preliminary results
of monitoring of the parliamentary elections. The NGO stated that
the process of voting and of calculating the votes was conducted
in peaceful democratic atmosphere. There were certain mistakes and
law offences outside the election centers, but they had very little
influence on the voting results.

As negative factors of the elections "The Vote is YOURS!" pointed out
that the candidates were not given equal conditions for pre-election
campaign, low number of alternative candidates at certain election
centers, unbalanced proportions of electoral committee members,
psychological pressure upon the voters (certain parties tried to
"bribe" the voters rendering them humanitarian aid), low attention
of the mass media to the election campaign.

In spite of all the violations, the NGO marked certain positive
changes, which displayed the will of both the political powers and
the voters to hold fair and democratic elections. The representatives
of the "The Vote is YOURS!" organization, which has over 4 thousand
volunteers in 10 regions of the Republic of Armenia, stated that the
violations had no effect on the results of the elections and that
Armenia’s progress on the way to democracy is obvious.