OPPOSITION DECRIES HIGH COURT VERDICT ON ELECTION APPEALS
By Ruzanna Stepanian and Hovannes Shoghikian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
June 11 2007
Armenia’s opposition on Monday branded as ‘political’ the previous
day’s verdict passed by the Constitutional Court turning down election
appeals from four political forces.
Aram Sarkisian, the leader of the radical opposition Hanrapetutyun
party that had demanded the invalidation of party-list election results
along with allies – the New Times party and the Impeachment alliance,
said they hadn’t expected any other verdict after Robert Kocharian
put the legitimacy of the elections beyond all doubts at the National
Assembly’s opening session last Thursday.
"I am fully convinced that the evidence that we presented in parliament
was enough to invalidate ten such elections," Sarkisian said in an
RFE/RL interview.
Heghine Bisharian, a senior representative of the Orinats Yerkir party,
called the Constitutional Court’s verdict a ‘political decision’.
"We have already stated that the Constitutional Court has administered
political rather than constitutional justice," she charged. "This
spineless court this time again has beaten everyone’s expectations
by turning the proceedings into a farce… It means we don’t have an
independent Constitutional Court."
Ex-parliament speaker Artur Baghdasarian’s party, which is the only
of the four claimants that won representation in parliament in the
May 12 elections, had sought a recount of ballots in 10 percent of
some 2,000 polling stations across Armenia.
It took Constitutional Court Chairman Gagik Harutiunian some 80
minutes to read out a 47-page verdict that the Court arrived at as
a result of a ten-day proceeding.
The Court found that a number of provisions and articles of the
Electoral Code could be interpreted in more ways than one. It also
established that there were violations in separate polling stations,
however, it said the violations could not impact the vote outcome.
The Court’s verdict was read out in the absence of representatives
of the opposition who had boycotted the sessions since late last week
in protest of what they alleged to be a "political farce".
The opposition push to invalidate the Central Election Commission’s
(CEC) decision on the election result was also supported by fellow
oppositionists outside the courtroom.
"The Constitutional Court has not changed its face," said Felix
Khachatrian, who represented the opposition Artarutyun alliance at
the CEC. "It repeated its style of work that we also witnessed during
the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2003."
U.S.-born ex-foreign minister Raffi Hovannisian’s Heritage party,
which is also represented in Armenia’s fourth National Assembly,
had been supportive of the opposition claims.
Heritage party spokesman Hovsep Khurshudian regretted the Court’s
decision, saying they had expected "a more unbiased and comprehensive
investigation."
"The course of the proceedings showed that there were certain episodes
of guidance there," he said, adding that the Constitutional Court’s
decision more looked like a political decision.
Heritage representatives that had won seats in the legislature
did not collect their mandates last week. One of the conditions for
their decision then was the ongoing proceedings at the Constitutional
Court in connection with the appeals challenging the legitimacy of
the elections.