VOTE RESULTS IN 3 YEREVAN PRECINCTS ANNULLED
esults-in-3-yerevan-precincts-annulled/
Jun 4th, 2009
YEREVAN (RFE/RL)-Electoral authorities in Armenia have invalidated
the official results of Sunday’s municipal elections in three Yerevan
precincts and asked prosecutors to investigate what they said was
serious fraud committed there.
All of those polling stations are located in Yerevan’s Malatia-Sebastia
district, from which the Armenian opposition, mass media and
independent observers reported the largest number of irregularities
on election day.
The decision to invalidate the polls held there was made late Wednesday
by two district election commissions covering Malatia-Sebastia. The
Central Election Commission (CEC) said on Thursday that it sent
the ballots, vote protocols and other documents from the precincts
to the MalaOffice of the Prosecutor-General, asking it to open a
criminal case.
The development means that elections in the three polling stations may
have to be re-run, something which would delay the announcement of
the final vote results by the CEC. Still, repeat polls would hardly
have a major impact on the CEC’s preliminary vote tally that gave a
landslide victory to President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party of
Armenia. The Armenian opposition has rejected it as fraudulent.
The Special Investigative Service (SIS), a law-enforcement agency
subordinated to the prosecutors, has already launched criminal
proceedings into fraud reported by Armenian media in seven other
Malatia-Sebastia polling stations. A member of one of those precinct
commissions and another local resident supporting the Republican
Party were arrested by the SIS on Tuesday on charges of stuffing
"fake ballots" marked for the ruling party.
The SIS also supervised on Thursday recounts in two other
Malatia-Sebastia precincts conducted by CEC representatives. In one
of them, a sack of cast ballots, supposedly sealed and signed by
precinct commission members, was found to have been tampered with.
Malatia-Sebastia has been a major trouble spot in various elections
held in Armenia over the past decade. Samvel Aleksanian, one of the
country’s wealthiest men holding sway in the area, has been widely
linked with voter intimidation, vote buying and other irregularities
reported there. Aleksanian is also known as a longtime backer of
President Sarkisian and the Republican Party.