Monitoring Reports Provide Details on Election Violations in Armenia

The two reports – prepared by It's Your Choice (IYC), a non-partisan, non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting civil society – focus both on the campaign period and the February 19 election itself. Using about 4,000 volunteers, IYC began its monitoring activities in October 2002, long before the opening of the official campaign.

The NGO recorded numerous violations during the campaign, the overwhelming majority of them committed by Kocharian supporters. It called special attention to the mobilization of administrative resources to work on the president's behalf. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The report cited instances in which elected local officials pressured their constituents to vote for Kocharian.

In addition, IYC characterized mass media coverage of the campaign as biased "both quantitatively and qualitatively" in favor of the incumbent. "This unfair coverage occurred especially on state-controlled media [television], the prime source of broadcast information for citizens," the report noted. During one 10-day monitoring period of Public TV, the report said, Kocharian received over 40 percent of the campaign coverage. The other eight candidates split the remaining coverage, with Artashes Geghamian – the third place finisher in the presidential election – receiving the most coverage among challengers at 21 percent.

In a separate report, released two days after the election, IYC found the administration of the balloting to be haphazard, and in many instances violations and oversights appeared designed to boost the number of votes cast for Kocharian. "In general, PECs [Precinct Election Commissions] purposefully did not fulfill their legal responsibilities," the report said.

To monitor the election, IYC deployed 1,400 observers at 700 voting precincts throughout Armenia. Among the more serious breaches of electoral procedure recorded by IYC monitors were improper electioneering, ballot-box stuffing, fraudulent tabulation practices and the intimidation of monitors and mass media representatives.

In one of the more egregious cases of voting fraud witnessed by IYC monitors, the report alleges that Hrach Abgarian, mayor of the town of Vagharshapat, along with a member of the country's parliament, Hakob Hakobian, organized the stuffing of ballot boxes in all of the town's voting precincts.

"This [the ballot-box stuffing] took place in the presence of the PEC chairmen, and [PEC] members, proxies, observers, voting military personnel and voters who were present in the precinct at the moment," the report said. "Although observers notified [precinct election] commission chairmen and members regarding their observation, the ballot stuffing in Vagharshapat precincts