Forecast: Politically biased actions of law enforcement officers in  local elections will lead to no good

ArmInfo.The electoral, situational and political bias actions of the law enforcement system in the elections to local self- government bodies in Armenia are  unacceptable and will definitely lead us to no good. A similar  opinion was expressed to ArmInfo by the public and political figure  Suren Sahakyan.

On December 5, in 36 communities of 9 regions of Armenia, the last  elections to local self-government bodies were held this year.   According to the official data of the RA CEC, only in 16 out of 36  communities the ruling Civil Contract party won more than 50% of the  votes.

Commenting on the arrests of former mayor Mamikon Aslanyan, head of  the United Vardenis bloc Aram Harutyunyan, elected mayor of Goris  Arush Arushanyan, who won the elections in Vanadzor, Sahakyan  described this process as very similar to political persecution. In  his opinion, thus, by means of the law enforcement system, the ruling  party is trying to neutralize the leaders of the victorious political  forces in those communities, in which it had no chance of winning,  recalling tricks from the past.  

Assessing the local elections as a whole, Sahakyan emphasized that  the political team he supported in the elections, the Citizen's  Choice party, won seats in the Councils of Elders in all four  communities in which he took part. And, in general, despite all the  obvious shortcomings and problems in which the last local elections  were held, the politician considers them a step forward in comparison  with the elections that took place before 2018.  

"In my opinion, unacceptable abuse of administrative levers, crowds  of voters and others at polling stations and, of course, pressure on  candidates are among such problems. I would like to emphasize that  from time to time after 2018, each electoral process creates more  problems and contains more flaws than the previous one.  The latter  also allows us to speak about not the best tendencies in the  development of democracy in our country," Sahakyan summed up.