Complaint filed over CIS mission representative

PanARMENIAN.Net - “An unprecedented incident” involving a representative of the CIS observer mission has been recorded, Daniel Ioannisyan, a representative of the Independent Observer mission, said in comments to journalists.

He added that the mission has appealed to the Central Electoral Commission (CEC), requesting that the CIS observer be stripped of accreditation, reports Factor.am .

“We have also seen a case that probably has no precedent. A CIS observer — that is, an international observer — is directly engaged in political campaigning and openly expressing support on his Facebook page for one of the political forces. We have already submitted an application to the CEC regarding this behavior, demanding that the observer be deprived of accreditation. We sent the application about 20 to 30 minutes ago and have not yet received any information. We hope action can be taken in this regard,” Ioannisyan said.

According to him, several issues are also evident in the information environment surrounding the elections.

“In particular, we see that an initiative not accredited as an observation mission and clearly affiliated with one of the political parties — namely the Hayakve initiative — is reporting numerous violations. It is unclear what the source of its information is regarding those alleged violations. If there is an observation mission that is in reality a disguised Hayakve initiative, then its impartiality should be examined. Moreover, some of the reports are presented without context and not in a statistical framework, but rather as a stream of information that creates the impression that everything is terrible and going badly,” Ioannisyan stated.

Regular National Assembly elections are underway in Armenia. The country’s 2,005 polling stations opened at 8:00 a.m. The voter registry includes 2,485,851 registered voters. Polling stations will remain open until 8:00 p.m.

A total of 18 political forces are participating in the parliamentary elections: two electoral alliances and 16 political parties. The electoral threshold is 4% for parties and 8% for alliances.