Regular session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Standing Committee was held Friday in Tirana, Albania, during which the PACE Observation Mission’s report on Armenia’s May 6 National Assembly (NA) elections was presented.    

But the report caused a “surprise and bewilderment” to NA MP and head of Armenia’s delegation at PACE, Davit Harutyunyan.

He stressed: “Armenia recorded considerable success in terms of accurate voting lists. All of the report’s accusations are superficial and they disregard Armenian authorities’ reasonable explanations. 

The great number of passports issued in 2011-2012 is explained by the fact that Armenia has begun issuing national passports ever since 1992, and with a ten-year expiry date, and it is natural that the old passports will have to be replaced with new ones in 2011-2012.”  

Also, Harutyunyan commented on the growth in the number of voters and said these numbers’ birth indicator “exceeds the death indicator by close to 270 thousand,” and therefore these citizens became eligible to vote for the first time in 2012 and became constituents.   

“So as to reduce this biased and unjust report’s damaging effect, I am authorized to formally invite the OSCE/ODIHR [OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights] to conduct a post-election mission to re-inspect the voting list inaccuracies,” Davit Harutyunyan stated from the PACE floor.      

“The report is full of manipulations,” he noted.

“The PACE Observation Mission should study and publicize a report on its own. It [i.e., the report] must be based solely on real, direct studies,” head of Armenia’s delegation at PACE proposed.