PACE concludes that election in Armenia met European standards

The report on Armenian presidential election on February 19 and post-election processes, presented on April 14 to the spring session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), states that the presidential election in Armenia passed basically in compliance with the standards of the Council of Europe.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports that in the opinion of the author of the report, head of the PACE's monitoring group John Prescott, the authorities had managed to transform the legislative mechanisms, however, they failed to exhibit sufficient political will to enforce these mechanisms.

The report expresses a concern with the fact that chairpersons of electoral commissions, their deputies and secretaries had been nominated by those political forces which supported the candidature of Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisyan. The report also worries that the electoral commissions were under the control of one of the political forces, which challenges the fairness of the election outcomes.

The document draws attention to the work of mass media during the pre-election period. In particular, when speaking about the work of electronic mass media, the members of the monitoring group remark that, despite the comparable by time pre-election coverage of all candidates' campaigns, the opinions that sounded in relation to Levon Ter-Petrosyan were mostly negative.

It is also noted that after introduction of the state of emergency many supporters of Ter-Petrosyan were arrested, and it is actually obvious that the authorities apply tough measures against the opposition. The authors mark in the end of the report that although they do not deal with the introduction of the state of emergency, however, it is clear that the cause of this measure was the lack of trust of the society to the legitimacy of the election results.