Taron Margaryan appoints fake observer to important position
The newly elected City Council of Yerevan held its first sitting on June 9. At the end of the meeting, in response to journalists’ questions, Yerevan Mayor Taron Margaryan addressed the incident related to Anna Stepanyan, whom he appointed as Head of General Education Department at Yerevan Municipality earlier this week. The mayor said that he does not agree with the claims that Anna Stepanyan was a fake observer during last month’s municipal elections in Yerevan. “We have provided answers and there is also an answer by the Central Electoral Commission”, SUT.am cited Mr Margaryan as saying. It is worth reminding that during the May 14 elections, Anna Stepanyan, who was then principal of a Yerevan school, was present in 7/20 polling station as an observer from the “Education and Cultural Bridges” organization. Stepanyan was not accredited by the Central Electoral Commission though she had a document with a CEC stamp that had her name and surname written with a pen. Representative of “Union of Informed Citizens” NGO Daniel Ioannisyan had to call CEC Chairman Tigran Mukuchyan with a demand to remove the fake observer from the polling station. In the end, she was finally removed from there. The names of all the observers are published on the CEC website, and Mrs. Stepanyan’s name is not there. It is difficult to say what the statement by Taron Margaryan “We have provided answers” means, but the response of the Central Electoral Commission was definite, i.e. the fake observer was removed from the polling station. According to the “Independent Observer” initiative, observers from “Education and Cultural Bridges” were often guiding citizens to vote for the Republican Party of Armenia on the election day, SUT.am reports.
