EUROPEANS ARE TO SPEAK IN AUTUMN

Lragir.Am
14:37:42 – 01/06/2009

The mission of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the
Council of Europe to observe the municipal elections in Yerevan,
which observed the Yerevan Mayor election with the help of about
fifteen observers, presented its preliminary conclusions, stating
that the election was held positively.

"The Congress delegation welcomes and expresses its satisfaction in
connection with the Yerevan Mayor elections and in connection with
the fact that Armenia promoted the establishment of democracy with
the help of its own means. The Congress delegation registered some
progress in this connection in comparison with the previous Local
Authorities election in September 2008.

The democracy cannot be limited only to the electoral process. There
must be some culture concerning the election and its process. The
elections have to be simple, clear and transparent, even out of
the polling stations," stated the head of the CoE delegation Nigel
Mernegon.

He stated that the observers visited more than 230 polling stations
and spent there from 5 minutes to 2 hours time. "I do not think we
were able to do more within our possibilities. When we learnt of
different incidents and went to those polling stations we registered
some problems, which we will voice, we will also speak about those
posts where everything was going well".

According to him, the final report will be presented by October and
it will be presented to the PACE Autumn session. "We have to make a
thorough report where we will present the details", the head of the
CoE delegation. At the same time, he noted that he does not want to
say that everything corresponded to the European measurements.

"Of course, I have my own conclusions, but there are members of
our delegation, who did not express their thoughts, and we did not
manage to see everything what happened yesterday", stated Nigel
Mernegton. According to him, the mistakes, which he preferred not to
mention until the final report, may have influenced on the result of
the election, but not on its legality.