Ashot Manukyan ran as a HAK (Armenian National Congress) candidate in the race for a seat in parliament from Election District 30.

He lost the race in the winner take all district that includes the town of Vanadzor and environs. Manukyan is highly sceptical that the RA Constitutional Court will annul the election results as being fraudulent and rigged.

Manukyan labels the May 6 elections a “disgrace” and says they were conducted according to the principle “If he’s not caught in the act, he’s not a thief”.

“Bribes were handed out all over the place. Everybody knows this. But it’s hard to nail down because the givers and takers aren’t talking. They all come out clean,” says Manukyan, who heads the HAK office in Vanadzor.

He says such cases need to thoroughly investigated through legal channels but given that the government is behind the violations, the courts and prosecutors are actually hindering, not helping, such investigations.

Manukyan says the entire process is a closed chain whose links are hard to break.

He claims that the government’s main resource in its recent crushing victory at the polls was due to the 700,000 additional names on the voter rolls.

Manukyan said that when opposition forces applied to the Constitutional Court to allow for the publication of the names of those who had voted, it was aimed at avoiding precisely this type of manipulation.

He argues that the ruling authorities have honed their mechanisms for rigging the elections, moving away from the obvious ballot stuffing and beatings to more subtle means and pressure.