DEFENDANT’S REPRESENTATIVES STATED THE UNGROUNDED NATURE OF THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES’ APPLICATIONS TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

Mediamax
March 6, 2008

Yerevan /Mediamax/. The Constitutional Court (CC) of Armenia continued
today the consideration of applications of Armenian presidential
candidates Tigran Karapetian and Levon Ter-Petrosian on nullifying
the results of presidential elections.

Mediamax reports that the representatives of the defendant, which is
the Central Electoral Commission (CEC), as well as the representatives
of the co-defendants, which are the Police, the General Prosecutor’s
Office and the National Commission on TV and Radio, stated in the
court the ungrounded nature of applications of both presidential
candidates and urged the CC to reject the suits.

CEC Secretary Abram Bakhchagulian stated that real results of the
voting fully correspond to the publicized results of the presidential
elections.

According to him, the facts, registered in the special opinions of
electoral commission members, concern less that 1% of all the polling
stations, and cannot influence the results of elections. According
to Bakhchagulian, the consideration of the facts, brought in the
applications of the presidential candidates, do not fall under the
jurisdiction of CC.

Deputy Prosecutor General Aram Tamazian stated that many facts, brought
in the applications of Karapetian and Ter-Petrosian, either do not
contain corpus delicti, or should be considered in the Administrative
Court, the opportunity for turning to which the candidates ignored.

"The violations, registered during the pre-election campaign and on
the voting day, were not of mass nature and could not influence the
final official result of the elections", Tamazian stated. According to
him, as of March 1, the General Prosecutor’s Office, having studied
232 applications, initiated 37 criminal cases, 11 of which concern
preventing the freedom of will of the electors, 2 – falsification of
voting results and 2 – voting instead of another person.

The representative of the winning candidate, Prime Minister Serzh
Sarkisian, MP Davit Harutiunian rejected the accusations of the
plaintiff "of abusing administrative resource and use of illegal
financial means in the agitation campaign". The MP noted that "the
Prime Minister is not a state employee and was not obliged to take
a vacation in the period of the election campaign".

According to the current legislation, CC is to make the decision up
to March 8 inclusively.