Executive Secretary of the CIS monitoring mission Sergey Lebedev said today that the presidential polls in Armenia were free, open, competitive and met demands of the international norms. No facts casting doubts in legitimacy of the elections have been registered, although minor violations happened, the official says, NEWS.am reports.
The CIS monitoring mission consisted of 212 officials from 8 states. They visited over 1000 polling stations on February 18.
Head of the OSCE PA monitoring mission Tonino Picula said that the elections lacked competitiveness. There was no separation of political activists of the incumbent president and officials of state structures. This means that administrative resources and pressure on functionaries were used to involve them in voting and agitation, News Armenia reports.
Agitation was well-organized, but the decision of some parties to abstain from running for president provoked empathy among voters.
The International Expert Center for Electoral Systems (ICES) calls the elections legitimate. Alexander Zinker, ICES president and MP of the 15th calling, called the elections legitimate, democratic and said that they met the international norms. The problems he pointed out were power cuts, high density of people at some polling stations, lack of authorized officials of candidates and reports about disappearances of marks in passports 2 hours after voting.
35 independent experts of the EU, US and Israel were monitoring the elections within the framework of the ICES. The mission monitored 134 polling stations and gave a positive rating to work at 65% of them. Not a single polling station got a negative rating.
Lidia Lawson, President of the Independent US Center for Political Monitoring, emphasized the high grade of readiness of electoral commissions. Vote-counting was tranquil and without incidents.
Electoral Commission checked vote results of 1988 polling stations and says that President Serzh Sargsyan got 58.64% (861,378) votes, followed by Raffi Ovannisyan, leader of the Heritage Party and ex-Foreign Minister of Armenia, with 36.74% (539,674) votes.
Former Prime Minister Grant Bagratyan got 2.15% (31,643) of votes, leader of the Union for National Self-Determination Paruyr Ayrikyan got 1.23% (18,093), head of Radio Hay Andrias Gukasyan got 0.57% (8,328), epos researcher Vardan Sedrakyan got 0.42% (6,203) and former Foreign Minister of Nagorno-Karabakh Arman Melikyan 0.24% (3,520).
