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Saturday, September 11, 2010 |
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                  Print Edition
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Impeded the work of the journalist President of the electoral commission of the no.17 polling station of located in the no.14 precinct of Byurakan Avetik Simonyan, along with village head Hrach Avagyan and policemen called the reporter for “Radio Liberty” and threatened him to report that the journalist has impeded the elections and ceased the voting for an hour. The “Radio Liberty” reporter has been in the given polling station for at least half an hour and during all that time the voting has continued. As soon as the reporter entered the polling station he witnessed how some people were accompanying voters to the voting booths. The commission president explained some of the cases by saying that the voter was an elderly person and his “son or brother” was helping him out. Then, however, the reporter of “Radio Liberty” witnessed how one of the members of the commission accompanied the voter as well as open votes. Member of the “Armenian Volunteers’ Union” initiative nominated by the majority electoral system in the no. 14 precinct and currently imprisoned Vardan Malkhasyan’s brother and trusted person Masis Malkhasyan had intervened and demanded putting an end to the group voting, which turned into a debate. As a result, the commission demanded that he leave the polling station and policemen have accompanied him to the Aragatsotni police division. After a while members of the commission headed by the president started to demand that the reporter from “Radio Liberty” also leave the polling station, claiming that he is impeding the voting process because before his entrance everything was going smoothly. The trusted person of one of the candidates who had asked to remain anonymous told “Radio Liberty” that the reason for the confusion was the accumulation of people in the polling station. He didn’t consider it a show of active participation because he suspects that they had simply distributed electoral bribes and brought people to vote. It became clear much later that the electoral commission of the polling station had not recorded an event of “impeding” the voting process on the part of the reporter. |
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