Hetq has reported recently on the situation in thevillageofNorabakin the Gegharkunik Marz on the eve of the extraordinary election of the head of the village administration.

Our predictions proved correct – the village mayoral election was held with numerous violations. But before turning to the election results we would like to present the history of this body of local self-government from a slightly earlier time.

The late Samvel Karapetyan was the mayor of Norabak for thirteen years – he had served four three-year-terms, and in July 2006 was elected for the fifth time. According to villagers, nothing good had happened in Norabak during his term in office; on the contrary, out of 280 sound houses only 60 were stillstanding.

“He himself knew that he had destroyed the village inside out,” said Armen Ghazaryan, a land surveyor and treasurer of the village administration, who was a proxy of the opposition candidate. According to Ghazaryan, the residents of Norabak elected Samvel Karapetyan because he asked them to give him a chance to cleanse himself. “What was he going to cleanse himself of?” I asked. Armen Ghazaryan sighed in response, “The administration staff has not been paid salaries for seven years. It would be accurate to say that people have not paid taxes, but arrears have swelled out to the bursting point. This was what he was going to cleanse himself of.” Ghazaryan also said that out of a seven-kilometer-long water pipeline, only six pipes are left.

On November 22, 2006 the long-time head of the village administration died. And according to the law, one of the members of the local council was to become acting mayor until new elections were held. The acting mayor emerged three months later – on February 20, 2007. Until then the community stamp had been in the custody of Samvel Karapetyan's son Artak, one of the contenders in the March 4 election.

“There are documents dated January 20, 2007 stamped and signed by Samvel Karapetyan (already deceased). Who signed and stamped them? Last December I needed a reference and the secretary wrote and signed it and I took it to Artak for the stamp,” Armen Ghazaryan said.

The rogue stamp was used even on the day of the former mayor's funeral. “The registration record in Ruben Karapetyan's passport was stamped on November 24, 2006. Who stamped it and in accordance with what procedure, we don't know.”

The villagers believe that not appointing an acting mayor, leaving the stamp at the disposal of an unauthorized person, setting the election date in violation of the requirements of the law – all this had just one purpose – to enable the former mayor's son, Artak Karapetyan, to take up his father's post, something that, in fact, took place on March 4.

“Artak says, ‘I'm coming to continue my father's unfinished work.' That means the school building will be destroyed soon as well. There is no other unfinished work. If there is one building, one structure in the village, they just should show it to us and I will say that they have the right, they should come and build,” said a proxy of Vazgen Asatryan, the opposing candidate.

So what happened on March 4 in this village mostly inhabited by refugees? When the ballot box was opened in the evening there were 91 ballots cast for Artak Karapetyan, four of which, according to Armen Ghazaryan, were invalid. “In fact, Artak received 87 votes but the election commission members voted and decided that these four ballots were valid.”

Vazgen Asatryan received 90 votes, and one of the ballots was in fact invalid, but the commission decided to nullify 18 ballots. Armen Ghazaryan says that commission member Karen Avetisyan put marks on the ballots, allegedly to help people, and that is why they were considered invalid. “Let my fellow villagers excuse me, but they are a bit helpless and ignorant,;there are people who can't see, they didn't understand, they voted and cast the ballots.”

Seven out of eight commission members were Artak Karapetyan supporters. Only one backed Vazgen Asatryan—the math teacher at the village school, Tatul Petrosyan, who refused to sign the election protocol but was unable to prevent the fraud.

One Vazgen Asatryan supporter, Rudik Mnatsakanyan, who has a registration card, owns an apartment, and has resided in Norabak with his family since the time of the mass exodus fromAzerbaijan, came to the precinct with a red (Soviet) passport and a refugee ID card, but the commission didn't allow him to vote. Rudik Mnatsakanyan asked for reference papers to take to court but was turned down. The same thing happened with Larisa Astvatsatryan. (Vasil Parashyan, in contrast was allowed to vote after he presented a red passport and a refugee ID card because he was a supporter of Artak Karapetyan.) Teacher Armenuhi Markosyan, who has worked at the Norabak school for ten years, was also deprived of the right to vote.

These three residents had been allowed to vote in July 2006 when Artak Karapetyan's father was running for the office. “What has changed in eight months to deprove these people og their right to vote?” Armen Ghazaryan asked.

But that's not all. There were 22 people on the voters' list that had registered in the last three months – naturally with the help of the errant stamp. “They were registered to vote for Artak Karapetyan. We didn't know them at all; the commission members don't know them either,” said secretary of the village administration Artur Petrosyan. “If our government agencies want to take care of people let them come and call roll to see whether they reside in the community or not.”

During the election, these people were enrolled in the voters' list. The overwhelming majority of these “voters” bear the last name Karapetyan. “We told our children not to go to school today, and the principal knows it.” Armen Ghazarayan said. “We said, let those 22 people send their children. We'll see, maybe we were wrong.”

Comparing the numbers, it is clear that Vazgen Asatryan was elected mayor of Norabak, but it is Artak Karapetyan who will act as mayor.

The villagers propose gathering all the real residents of Norabak in one place for an open vote. If people vote for Artak Karapetyan they are ready to accept the former mayor's son as the head of the local administration. But for now, they vow not to let Artak Karapetyan work in the village. “He is not going to work here. We don't know what is going to happen in the end, but he will not work here. If the government doesn't help us, we will have do something else.”

“Was the contest politicized?” I asked as I was leaving. “No. You can't say it was. Neither of them has any party affiliation,” Armen Asatryan said. “We wanted Vazgen because he came to Norabak in 1988 from thevillageofSpitakashenin the Shamkhor region and has lived and worked here ever since. He is a self-made man,”