Armenia-Diaspora Election Monitoring Mission: First of its Kind
Saturday, May 4th, 2013
The local-Diaspora monitoring mission prepares for Yerevan municipal
elections on Sunday, May 5
BY URSULA KAZARIAN
In an unprecedented effort, approximately 100 Diasporans, both
visiting and repatriated, as well as local Armenians and non-Armenian
expats, have been working with approximately 160 election observers
from civil society organizations such as Transparency International,
and Asparez Press Club, Gyumri, to monitor the upcoming Yerevan
municipal elections this Sunday, May 5th.
On Election Day, the observers will be at polling stations across
Yerevan and will document, record, and videotape any fraudulent
activity that may take place, such as ballot box stuffing, multiple
voting, attempted bribery, and voter intimidation.
The group will be providing Diaspora media outlets with information in
real-time that we encourage you to follow. Watch for updates from
observation mission team members on Election Day, May 5th.
Also, visit and `like’ the Yerevan Media Center Facebook page to keep
up with the latest news directly from the observers in the polling
stations. And of course continue to get updates from Asbarez.
Motivativation
This undertaking was inspired in part by Diasporan Narine Esmaeili,
who witnessed systemic fraud during the Armenian presidential election
in February.
Following the election, Esmaeili reported that she had been physically
assaulted and threatened by polling station officials when she
attempted to protest violations of Armenia’s Electoral Code as they
happened. According to a video interview in which Esmaeli recounted
her experience, she had witnessed a group of 25-30 men walk into the
station and surround the ballot box.
When she protested, Esmaeili says one of the men in the group pushed
her against a wall and pinned her there with her hands pressed
together, while polling station officials cut open the ballot box seal
and allowed one of the men from the group to pour in a bag full of
marked ballots. Later, local police officers arrived at the polling
station and told Esmaeili to be a `good girl’ and not to talk to the
media. Watch Esmaeli’s full video testimony here.
Despite these and other observer reports of egregious violations of
the Electoral Code, the international observation mission
rubber-stamped the election as generally `well-administered’ and
`characterized by a respect for fundamental freedoms.’
The formal statement was met with heavy public criticism, and some
individual observers strongly disagreed with the main findings. As
OSCE mission observer Dermot Ahern said:
`I’ve been a practicing politician here in Ireland for 32 years,
contesting and winning every election I personally fought in. I was
director of [the] elections board at [the] national and local level[s]
for my party. I have never witnessed anything like this. From my
experience, I know a trend when I see one, and something very strange
happened to overturn the result.’
Civic Response
Bolstered by the overwhelming evidence of widespread, massive fraud
during the presidential elections, the local-Diaspora monitoring
mission has trained a total of 250 volunteers to observe the May 5th
Yerevan elections. The group believes that a well-organized and
well-trained election observation mission is critical to prove claims
of fraud and associated criminal activity.
The local-Diaspora monitoring partnership believes that widespread
media coverage of live observation reports from the precincts is
crucial in attracting strong public support to hold authorities
accountable for the accuracy and veracity of the official election
results. In addition to training with the local observation missions,
the Yerevan-based Diaspora team is working with Diaspora media outlets
to provide reliable updates in real-time.
This Diaspora observation mission will also serve as a foundation and
learning experience for its organizers, who intend to coordinate
similar missions in future elections. A positive reception of this
effort will fuel greater local-Diaspora cooperation in the future
towards the common goal of strengthening the democratic process in
Armenia.
The result of this coordinated effort will necessarily inform the
structure and nature of grassroots Diaspora assistance in the future.
It is therefore important to follow the activities of this pioneer
group, not only during the election, but also in the subsequent days
and weeks, in order to fully ascertain the added value that
coordinated Diaspora assistance may provide to the overall impact of
the mission.