The biggest problem of the election landscape in Armenia is the law enforcement and judicial systems: Daniel Ioannisyan’s speech at the HDIM meeting of OSCE participating states

The Human Dimension Meetings of the OSCE ODIHR are taking place in Warsaw these days, where Daniel Ioannisyan, Programs Coordinator at Union of Informed Citizens NGO, has also addressed electoral reform in Armenia and recent local elections, highlighting the progress and gaps.

«Madame moderator,

Because Russia’s attempts to interfere with Armenia’s elections are so far unsuccessful, I will be able to focus on our domestic problems regarding the electoral environment.

So, in 2021, large-scale electoral reform was adopted mainly based on recommendations of civil society. But there is still a big gap in campaign financing regulations and serious problems with implementation of other pre-election campaign regulations.

In particular, it should be noted that independent observers have recorded a number of cases when ruling party representatives misused administrative resources to bring public servants to the ruling party campaign events. In isolated cases, some people were even fired because of refusing to join the campaign. According to Armenia’s legislation, it is a criminal offense. So, we have sent respective letters to the Prosecutor’s Office, but no investigation was initiated.

Last year, during the election of the Yerevan city council, the acting mayor from the ruling party committed another crime when he campaigned in one of the state-owned universities. And again, no investigation followed.

Another problem that we have observed in local elections of the last several years is that there have been cases of criminal prosecutions against some of the representatives of the opposition who won the local elections, which, despite having grounds, sometimes dangerously coincided chronologically with these people winning in the elections.

Also, I would like to bring your attention to the fact that the Corruption Prevention Commission of Armenia has solved more than 5 crimes regarding party financing in the last 2 financial years (3 out of which – by the ruling party). Several months ago, the Corruption Prevention Commission officially asked the Prosecutor’s Office to initiate an investigation on those violations, but so far criminal investigation has not been initiated.

At the same time, I should note that the voting day in Armenia is almost always well-organized and without significant violations. Legislation regarding rights of observers and live broadcast is well implemented.

While we have observed that the Public Television provides very unequal coverage of main candidates before the official start of the pre-election campaign, I should note that the public broadcaster is doing a great job by organizing pre-election debates between candidates.

As you can see, the main problem of the electoral environment in Armenia is related to law enforcement agencies and the judiciary. And that is a topic for another plenary session.

However, it should be noted that elections in Armenia are competitive and in many communities, the opposition (even radical opposition) is able to win local elections and that is a good indicator.

Thank you very much».