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The amendments and supplements to Armenia’s Electoral Code along with the enclosed legislative package adopted today by the National Assembly are aimed at silencing people in order to prevent them from reporting electoral fraud, Chairman of Helsinki Committee of Armenia Avetik Ishkhanyan told a press conference.

In the words of human rights defender the absence of complaints does not necessarily mean trust in the electoral process.

“It seems the authorities expect less complaints about fraud, since people will not report vote irregularities to avoid criminal liability. After all is this move supposed to increase trust in the electoral process,” Ishkhanyan asked rhetorically.

To remind, along with the amended Electoral Code, the parliamentarians adopted amendments to the RA Criminal Code that contains a provision envisaging a penalty in the amount of 200-800-fold of the minimum salary and imprisonment for inaccurate or intentionally false report about electoral fraud respectively.  

Apart from that, the amended Code envisages publishing the list of voters who participated in the elections after those are over – a provision that has been long advocated by the opposition forces.
Another amendment is about installing video cameras in all 2 000 polling stations to live broadcast the whole electoral process as well as the vote count.

The human rights defenders assess the amendments as further tools to silence them.

To Ishkhanyan’s words, in all nationwide elections they have conducted monitoring with electoral fraud registered in places. With the new Code the trustees, per him, will be constrained to voice the cases of electoral fraud out of the concern to be criminally persecuted.

“This appears to be a very dangerous trend and reminds me of the anti-Soviet Agitation Article in the Soviet times when people were jailed. What is the meaning of persecuting a person for reporting a fraud? This seems to be a co