Contrasting impressions

Artashat, polling station 17/2, school #2, 1:10 a.m.: OSCE/ODIHR observers Aaron Johanson and Eckhart Rodhen come inside. Five and a halfhoursprior I met them in the neighboring 17/5 polling station. Observers Artak and Narine were alarmed bythe ballot stuffing there, but the OSCE/ODIHR observers told them they wouldprobably not be there forthe ballot counting. So I was very happy to know that Johanson and Rodhen would be present.

It was around 8:00 p.m. Along with Hetqcameraman Hakob Poghosyan I went inside the 17/2 polling station and the doors were locked immediately after we went inside. After midnightsome local observers came too, but the doors weren’t opened. Then came Johanson and Rodhen, the "international" observers, leaving all doorsclosed behind them.

Rodhen and Johanson

“We heard that the ballot counting stopped,” said their translator. 

“We are finished now and already signed the envelopes. Who told you that?” said the Republican Electoral Commission chairmanHrach Hovhannisyan querulously.

“Yeah [or Aaa]… Good, they’re done,” one of the international observers said to the other.

I don’t want to step over the limit and repeat what I was feeling at that moment in their presence. They didn’t ask anything of us, neither from any member of the commission nor the observers present. They were just enjoying jokes by Gegham Mirzoyan, who’s Serzh Sargsyan’s proxy. Smile, laugh and compliment; the tense atmosphere in the long corridor of the school momentsbeforehad completely disappeared. A few minutes later we left, leaving a big, still opened ballot bag full of envelopes in the precinct and taking an official document of distribution of votes with us: Serzh Sargsyan - 1,411, Raffi Hovannisian - 287, Hrant Bagratyan - 13… 

Republican Party commission members and Serzh Sargsyan's proxies

Officiallypresent in the 17/2 polling station were proxies representing the Armenian National Congress (HAK), Heritage Party, Prosperous Armenia Party, Electoral Commission representatives, and proxies of presidential candidates Raffi Hovannisianand Hrant Bagratyan. But Mirzoyan was coordinating everyone and everything, including theundertakingsof Hovhannisyan, the commission chairman.

Hrach Hovhannisyan	Gegham Mirzoyan

Meanwhile the “Rights of Europe” union observer Narek Babayan tried to do his job andtalked about violations.He was threatened and insulted by Mirzoyan, someone named Armen (as I understand, Mirzoyan's son), Armen's friends and the chairman of the commission.

Basically, almost everyone in the precinct was watching Narek closely. There were 10 people therewho weren’t asked to leave by the commission chairman, although Narek announced that nonessential individuals had no right to be in the polling station. Instead, the chairmanasked the police, standing silently nearby, to remove Narek as he interrupted their work. But fortunately, the police didn’t do anything, as always.

However, per Sargsyan's proxy's demand, they removed a group of observers who had come urgently and were gathered near the window of the school corridor. 

‘Ruined’ ballot counting

The first thing that attracted our attention during the ballot counting was the perfectly stacked ballots taken from the box. Everyone of themwas a vote for Serzh Sargsyan. There were about 10 to 11 similar bundles. When randomly arranged ballots were taken from the ballot box, the majority of the votes were for Raffi Hovannisian.

Sargsyan was undisputedly leading; you could clearly see that his votes were one-third more that Raffi Hovannisian's, and stacks of ballots were continuously taken from the ballot box. Narek went out for a smoke; I was doing the same on the other side of the corridor and Hakob the cameraman was videotaping the ballot counting.He told me that something happened: some people intentionally stood in front of him, blocking the view of his camera. It seemed that Hovannisian's ballots decreased significantly during those moments.

Nonessential individuals in the polling station

Hakob's guess wasn’t baseless: Hovannisian's ballots were less than they had been five minutes prior. But we were calm; Hakob was shooting, and we were surethat the footage would clarify whetherHovannisian ballots really decreased

Recalling Narek's stories about possible ballot stuffing in the 17/2 polling station, I first thought that in order to "balance" the vote they decreased Hovannisian's ballot count bystuffing. Later I noticed that Sargsyan's ballots significantly increased. Anyway, Hakob and I were waiting for the counting to end.

However, during that time Mirzoyan became more active. He invited Hakob and I to the neighboring room to drink some brandy, joking and offering to exchange phone numbers, assuring us that he was a good, supportive friend and, despite everything, he would like us to hang out “like brothers”the following day.

The counting was well underway. Narek was standing behind two people sitting beside one other and counting, and was silently watching the process. Suddenly, he announced that at least 3, even 10 ballots counted by the woman sitting in front of him weren’t for Sargsyan.But instead of stopping, the woman continued to count them as Sargsyan's ballots.

Hasmik Mkrtchyan	Narek Babayan

Then commission chairman Hovhannisyan started to yell and requested that the counting stop for one hour. He started to scold Narek for making the woman, who was the same age of his mother, cry.

“If her son was here right now he would kill you,” he told Narek.

The woman who was counting--the representative of Electoral Commission Hasmik Mkrtchyan--wasn’t actually crying. In her conversation with us she mentioned that she had been there since morning, and being tired she perhaps didn’t notice a thing or two, and there had been no need to offend her. Apparently, Mkrtchyan felt offended because Narek was suspicious of her counting.

There was a group of people on the other side of the corridor. Mirzoyan and Hovhannisyan tried persuading her to continue counting but she refused, requesting that someone else step in. "I have a grown daughter, I feel embarrassed." Then she told me, "I don’t know what would happen to me if Narek offends me once more."

They started counting again. Narek, standing in the same place, was watching them, but Mkrtchyan sat in another spot around the table. Then I decided to watch. She was counting Sargsyan's votes by raising the bottom-left edge of the ballots (maybe intentionally, I don’t know).

Sargsyan's name was second-to-laston the ballot, and I noticed that on those counted ballots the last three boxes were empty. I looked up, and at that moment the commission chairman, who was staring directly into my eyes, said friendlily that if I had any comments I should express them. I showed one of the ballots to everyone, saying that it was cast for Raffi Hovannisian, who was listed under number 3.

“Who is that?” one bold man yelled, pointing at me.

“That’s Arayik, chairman of the 17/3 polling station,"Mirzoyan said.

I took a bunch of ballots, pushed them forward and said that it seemed all of themwere votes for Raffi.

Nonessential individuals in the polling station 17/2

Then Mirzoyan started to shout at me, asking what did I have to do with ballots, being a journalist. Then he turned to Narek and said, "This is all your fault, rat."

Later he started to threaten that he would lose his control and would start to use bad words, like "idiot," “punk” and others. The commission chairman "reminded" Narek that he wasn’t a man, and that patriotism wasn’t demonstrated in such a way.

I can't even remember how allthat noise stopped. Mirzoyan advised Hovhannisyanthathebring it to an end. He generously added 3 (the ones that Narek noticed) votes to Raffi Hovannisian's 284, then added up the number of ballots cast for other candidates along with void and empty ballots. Then he deducted that number from the entire total and tallied that number for Serzh Sargsyan. That’s how it turned out.