Disgraceful referendum, which was hope for Armenia (video)
The referendum for constitutional changes, held in Armenia 9 years ago, is the most disgraceful in the history of referendums in Armenia. Prisoners and the authorities were the most active participants of that referendum. Before the referendum, the opposition headed by Stepan Demirchyan announced that it boycotted the referendum. “It isn’t the end of the world,”- announced Vice President of National Assembly Tigran Torosyan. Parliamentarian Assembly of Council of Europe and Venice Commission called people of Armenia to take part in the referendum. “It is an opportunity for Armenians,”- announced Assembly President Rene van der Linden. Opposition member Paruyr Hayrikyan called the authorities no to fake the referendum, as the people had already said “yes” to changes. The authorities didn’t listen to the former political prisoner. The referendum was fully falsified. Robert Kocharyan voted openly as he promised. Central Electoral Commission issued the results every three hours. According to the first results, 223 thousand people took part in the voting, after three hours- already 602 thousands. During those days National Unity head Artashes Geghamyan was surprised- it is absurd, it turns out, that a person votes per minute. Whereas Armenia had never seen such emptiness of polling stations. At the end of the day it turned out that 1.5 million citizens took part in the voting. 95 percent of them said “yes” to constitutional changes. Council of Europe and other international observers considered the referendum generally appropriate to the international standards with only some violations. One English Lord noted that 1.5 million people couldn’t have taken part in the referendum, but surely 800 thousands said “yes” to the changes. Vazgen Manukyan, who had seen 1996, announced that he had never seen and heard about such fraud. The opposition announced that only 12 percent of voters took part in the referendum. The authorities answered, “The referendum was held, we are calling not to follow the calls trying to destabilize the country.” The government of Robert Kocharyan immediately arrested dozens of oppositional members for prophylactic purposes. Many people were invited to Police for conversations in order not to take part in the protest actions of the opposition. “Heritage” party President Raffi Hovhannisyan was searched in the airplane flying to Vienna in order to find out which materials concerning the referendum he was taking out of Armenia. International Crisis Group Caucasus Project Director Sabine Freizer ended all the fuss over the fraud with one sentence. She announced that with such referendum Armenia missed the last opportunity to become a democratic state. By the way, still on May 25, 2003, on National Assembly election day, the same draft of changes was voted and failed in Armenia. At that time all the financial and administrative resources were directed to the falsification of elections of the National Assembly.
