Tension Erupts at Polling Station 4/40 in Arabkir Administrative District

At polling station 4/40 in the Arabkir administrative district, tensions flared briefly in the evening between observers from the "Independent Observer" mission and members of the electoral commission.

Commission members noted in the logbook that since 7 AM, observers from the "Independent Observer" mission have "regularly interfered with the commission's work through provocations". They described these actions as deliberate attempts to create a situation where the commission chairman was constantly insulted and false statements were made. The purpose, they claimed, was to enter the polling station and record a fabricated and baseless report.

However, at the same time, the comments from the observers were not recorded in the logbook. Infocom contacted Daniel Ioannisyan, a representative of the "Independent Observer" mission, to understand what occurred from their perspective.

Ioannisyan stated that the observers had documented numerous violations at the polling station, but the head of the commission refused to carry out appropriate administrative actions regarding these violations, neglected his duties, and also refused to record the violations.

In response to our observation that the observers' notes were absent from the logbook, Ioannisyan mentioned that the commission chairman did not allow the observers to make entries in the logbook or consult the entries and take pictures of it.

The reported violations included the failure of a person present at the polling station to display their identification in a visible manner and breaches of procedure by the person responsible for the stamps, among others.

By 7 PM, we noted four reports in the logbook, one of which was already mentioned. One report noted that an observer from the "Hayakve" monitoring mission indicated that the cameras at the polling station were not capturing the position of the fingerprint devices, meaning the camera was improperly positioned.

Another report noted that a representative of the "Independent Observer" had observed a violation committed by the person responsible for the stamp, who had marked the ballots of the first two voters who entered the polling station without authorization. Another entry detailed how the same representative had approached the commission chairman about an individual present at the polling station, stating that it was difficult to identify them since they had not displayed their identification visibly. In response, the commission chairman said that it was visible to him, and when the observer insisted that the badge was simply in the observer's hand and could not be identified, the chairman told the observer to go speak with the authorized person. The request to document this fact was left incomplete in the log.

On another page of the logbook, there was an entry made by Marine Mkrtchyan, a representative of the "Force is in Unity" party, claiming she was accused of not having a badge, which she asserted was false. She stated that commission members, observers, authorized representatives, and video recordings confirmed this.