OSCE NOT TO MONITOR YEREVAN POLLS

2_4/8/2009_1
Wednesday, April 8, 2009

YEREVAN (RFE/RL)–Armenian authorities will not invite the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor next month’s mayoral
elections in Yerevan, officials said on Wednesday.

The Central Election Commission (CEC) confirmed that such invitations
have only been sent to the heads of foreign diplomatic missions in
Armenia as well as the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and
Regional Administrations.

The OSCE and its Warsaw-based Office of Democratic Institutions
and Human Rights (ODIHR) have been the main international body to
monitor just about every presidential and parliamentary election held
in Armenia since independence. The findings of hundreds of observers
deployed by the OSCE/ODIHR have greatly influenced the international
and domestic legitimacy of those elections.

"In general, the ODIHR carries out monitoring missions during national
elections," Tatev Ohanian, a spokesman for the CEC, said, explaining
its decision not to invite OSCE observes for the May 31 elections of
Yerevan’s new municipal assembly. "That is true for not only Armenia
but also other countries."

"Local elections are usually monitored by the Council of Europe’s
Congress of Local and Regional Administrations," Ohanian told RFE/RL.

The OSCE monitored local polls held in Albania and Moldova in 2007.

"No invitation has been sent to the OSCE as a whole or the ODIHR,"
said Sergey Kapinos, head of the OSCE office in Yerevan. "That is
why we will confine ourselves to the kind of monitoring which we
carried out during recent local elections in Armenia. Namely, with
the personnel of the OSCE office in Yerevan."

The forthcoming polls in Yerevan will be different from those
elections in that they will involve at least one third of the country’s
electorate. The main opposition Armenian National Congress (HAK) has
pledged to turn them into a "second round" of last year’s disputed
presidential election that triggered massive anti-government protests
in the capital. The HAK on Wednesday declined to comment on the
authorities’ decision not to invite OSCE observers this time around.

Kapinos said that the proper conduct of the municipal elections
is "very important" for the OSCE and the broader international
community. "I sincerely hope that the elections will take place
in accordance with the letter of the law, that there will be no
violations and that all election contenders will be guided by legal
norms," he told RFE/RL.