HONOURING OF OBLIGATIONS AND COMMITMENTS BY ARMENIA

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[03:32 pm] 20 December, 2007

Statement on the visit to Armenia, 3-5 December 2007 by Mr Colombier

Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member
States of the Council of Europe

(Monitoring Committee)

Co-rapporteurs: Mr Georges Colombier, France, Group of the European
People’s Party and Mr Mimica, Croatia, Socialist Group

I visited Armenia for the Monitoring Committee from 3 to 5 December
2007 last, accompanied by Mrs Despina Chatzivassiliou, Secretary of
the Monitoring Committee. Mr Neven Mimica, the other co-rapporteur,
was not able to attend since at the last minute he felt ill.

The purpose of the mission was to verify the implementation of
Resolution 1532 (2007) approx. one year after its adoption, half a
year after the parliamentary elections (12 May 2007) and 2 months
and a half before the presidential elections (19 February 2008).

We met authorities at the highest level (President, Speaker of the
National Assembly, Prime Minister, various Ministers etc) as well as
NGOs, representatives of the international and diplomatic community,
media representatives and presidential candidates.

We received assurances by the President of the Republic, Speaker of
Parliament and Prime Minister that an invitation will soon be sent to
PACE to observe the presidential elections. An invitation will also
be sent to ODIHR with no restrictions on the number of observers. We
insisted on the need to receive the invitation as soon as possible
and ideally before 17 December, date of the Bureau meeting, so that
a pre-electoral mission can be organised for mid-January, prior to
the PACE session.

Although the electoral campaign will officially only start on 21
January 2008, the situation in Armenia was quite tense since most
candidates had already declared their intention to run for the
presidential elections and started their campaign.

The two main contesters are considered to be the current Prime
Minister and leader of the Republican Party, Mr Serzh Sargsyan, and
the First President of Armenia (1991-1998), Mr Levon Ter-Petrossyan,
who has been "self-nominated" (although supported by numerous
opposition political parties). We met both. Two candidates come
from the National Assembly: Mr Vahan Hovhannisyan (from the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation faction which is no longer part of the ruling
coalition but has a special co-operation agreement with the latter)
and Mr Artur Baghdasaryan (from the Country of Law faction belonging
to the opposition). We met Mr Hovhannisyan but not Mr Bagdasaryan who
was visiting the regions during our mission. 5 other politicians have
submitted their nomination documents to the Central Electoral Committee
(CEC) which will examine them and register accordingly candidates by
20 January 2008.

It is the candidature of Mr Levon Ter-Petrossyan, after ten years of
silence, that seems to have actually caused an increasing attention to
the presidential elections which would have otherwise been considered
as won in advance by the candidate of the Republican Party which
obtained 49% of the seats in the National Assembly after the May
elections.

As regards the main findings of the mission, on the positive side:

Several legislative reforms have been completed notably as regards the
judiciary and the Public Prosecutor’s Office: following the adoption
of the Judicial Code and of the Code of Administrative Procedure,
a new judicial structure will start functioning as of 1 January
2008. Investigative powers have been transferred from the Public
Prosecutor’s Office to the police.

Amendments have also been recently adopted to the Electoral Code
as well as to the law on radio and television with regard to the
electoral campaign.

Although they have not yet been reviewed by the Venice Commission,
most interlocutors, notably from the OSCE and IFES, have told us that
these amendments present an improvement.

Although we raised once more the necessity of introducing inking to
avoid multiple voting, we were told that this proposal had already
been rejected by Parliament. Instead, for the same purpose, ID
documents will be stamped following an amendment which was accepted
as a compromise solution.

However, it is clear that implementation is again the main problem
as regards adopted reforms be it in the judiciary or in the field
of elections.

To start from the latter, the PACE as well as the Venice Commission,
have repeatedly underlined that the Electoral Code, even before the
recently adopted amendments, constituted a good basis for conducting
free and fair elections if applied properly and in good faith. The May
parliamentary elections, although in general positively assessed by
the international community, were highly critisised by local observers
and the opposition who alleged that the greatest violations took
place prior to the election day and were thus not visible to the
international observers.

As regards the role of the media, according to the law and assurances
we received, there should be equal coverage of the presidential
candidates during the official electoral campaign, that is only
as of 21 January 2008. However, at present, according to media
monitoring conducted by the Yerevan Press Club, there is excessive
coverage of the Prime Minister who accumulates this capacity with
that of presidential candidate and very negative coverage of Mr
Ter-Petrossyan. I insisted that a more balanced access to the public
television should be guaranteed for all 9 presidential candidates,
at least as of 7 December 2007, when all of them officially submitted
their nomination documents to the CEC.

Finally, an issue of concern as regards the forthcoming elections
is the use of administrative means of pressure against followers of
opposition candidates as well as intimidation and occasionally violence
exercised against them by the police (as was for instance the case
on 23 October 2007 when supporters of Mr Ter-Petrossyan were beaten
by the police while distributing leaflets announcing his next rally).

As regards the implementation of the judicial reform, despite
legislative improvements, judicial independence is far from being
guaranteed in practice.

A worrying recent development is the frequent use of disciplinary
proceedings against judges by the Minister of Justice (a former deputy
Public Prosecutor).

Moreover, police brutality seems to have risen during the year
as confirmed both by the Human Rights Defender in Armenia and the
CoE Commissioner for Human Rights. Ill-treatment is widely used in
particular as a means to obtain confessions.

The human rights NGOs and media representatives we met all spoke about
a deterioration of the human rights situation in the country in 2007.

As regards local self-government, the draft law on Yerevan was passed
at first reading while we were visiting the country. It was agreed
and apparently approved in Parliament that no second reading would
take place before March 2008 and proper consultation with CoE experts.

Last but not least, as regards Nagorno-Karabakh, I raised the issue
of the latest statement made by the Co-Chairs of the Minsk Group in
Madrid. Most of our interlocutors considered that an important step was
taken forward since the co-chairs submitted to the parties an official
document and no longer a non-paper summarising their position and the
current state of negotiations; this would be the basis for continuing
negotiations by the new President of Armenia after February 2008.