Launch of a database entitled the “Wall of Election Falsifiers”
To help enhance the integrity of election process in Armenia, “Policy Forum Armenia”, Transparency International Anticorruption Center, and Citizen Observer Initiative, with the financial support of the European Endowment for Democracy, developed a database entitled the “Wall of Election Falsifiers”. It is available at https://transparency.am/en/elections/falsifiers and includes information about 72 individuals and violations they committed during Armenia’s December 2015 Constitutional referendum.
The Wall features members of electoral commissions, election proxies as well as individuals without a formal role in the process. It contains data about the individuals’ profession, work place, position, photo, the polling station where the violations took place, description of the violation, registration of the complaints related to the violation and/or initiation of criminal proceedings and the process of the legal case, in many cases accompanied by photo and video evidence. Finally, information collected by the Citizen Observer Initiative, media coverage, and the official data published by law enforcement agencies was used for the compilation of the Wall.
Based on our research, we:
- Strongly urge the Central Electoral Commission to prevent individuals contained in the Wall from involvement in election commissions or having any other role in the electoral process;
- Encourage the media, election observer groups, and individual voters to seek out those individuals to help safeguard the electoral process during the upcoming elections of the National Assembly on April 2 2017 and beyond;
- Call upon the foreign embassies and organizations accredited in the Republic of Armenia, who help pursue democracy and the rule of law in Armenia, to take note of the Wall in order to block individuals contained therein from receiving any funding from them and to consider imposing other sanctions.