YEREVAN. – The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights’ (ODIHR) preliminary assessment, with regard to Armenia’s National Assembly elections on May 6, differ from the other reports in the sense that it does not mention as to what extent the elections met the international standards. Armenian Center for National and International Studies analyst Edgar Vardanyan stated this during a press conference on Thursday.    

“In general, they [i.e., OSCE/ODIHR] pointed to certain positive and negative occurrences. There are many negative assessments in this report. Overall, these elections deserve a mediocre grade,” Vardanyan noted, and added that the authorities once again presented the report out of context.      

In his view, television coverage of the 1999 elections was better than during this year’s voting.