 Armenia's police: much patience for opposition protests?
Armenia's Police Service, National Security Service (the former KGB), and Office of the Prosecutor-General are tightly controlled by President Kocharian and have been repeatedly used by him for fending off opposition challenges against his rule. That has included mass arrests of opposition activists in the aftermath of the February-March 2003 presidential election and during the opposition's ill-fated attempt in spring 2004 to topple the government with a campaign of demonstrations.
In recent years, reports in the Armenian press have suggested that the law-enforcement authorities have been given a new function of political policing, monitoring and suppressing opposition activity in local communities. According to local and Western election observers, they have so far done little to prevent or halt serious vote irregularities such as ballot box stuffing. There have been virtually no reported cases of individuals prosecuted for electoral fraud.
A 2006 amendment to the election code also gave the police the exclusive right to draw up Armenia's notoriously inaccurate voter lists, a major source of chronic vote rigging, and to submit them to election commissions.
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