Satik Badeyan: We Applied to Electoral Committee and Warned Community Heads, Then Threats Stopped (video)

EcoLur continues its series of reports on the elections in ecological hot spots. Observed told us how the elections were held in Tchambarak (Gegharkounik Region).

Irina Hovhannisyan, an observer, “Tchambarak always had an exclusive activity in the elections, which is radically different from other communities. But this time an extreme inactivity was observed. We were sure that not more than 20% of the residents will vote. When we saw that voting made up more than 50%, we were just taken aback…”

Satik Badeyan, Coordinator of elections, Chairman of Center for Territorial Development and Studies. “At 8:25 a.m. we already received first signals about violations – everybody knew in Tchambarak it was going to be one candidate. That’s why people didn’t come to vote. Violations were recorded almost everywhere: cases of double voting, when one person was given 4 ballots, but observers notices him and didn’t allow to drop the ballots into the box. Under the law, he should be detained on the spot, but nothing like that happened, this person ran away, and the police didn’t detect his identity and didn’t detect which member of the electoral committee gave four ballots at once and everything was explained with “local mentality”...Everything was done secretly, and where we noticed something like that, observers were threatened...”. 

Irina, “The observer was a young girl. She was told, whether she wasn’t not afraid of something to happen with her, whether she didn’t think she should marry in near future.”

Satik Badeyan: “We applied to the territorial committee and warned the community head, and only afterwards the threats stopped. A similar situation was in Ttu Jur community. Our observer decided not to recognize the elections valid, as the candidate was present all the time at the polling station during the whole election.”