International observers on hate speech and women’s participation in snap elections

Hate speech and aggressive speech accompany the campaign

“Armenia’s snap parliamentary elections were competitive, well-organized, but fragmented and marred by aggressive rhetoric,” the OSCE Office for Human Rights (ODIHR) said in Yerevan on the eve of the June 20 snap-election. (OSCE PA) Joint observation mission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

In the Statement of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions  the observers noted that there had been an increase in the level of intolerance, insult and discriminatory rhetoric in the run-up to the elections.

They stressed that during the pre-election campaign, the debate was increasingly filled with aggressive words, accusations, worsening the high degree of polarization, and further reducing the focus on political programs and policies.

“The deep burden has not diminished the effectively conducted elections. “We must hope that the results will be accepted by all sides of the political spectrum. The harsh propaganda rhetoric will be sent to history,” said George Katrugalos, head of the PACE delegation.

“Hate speech, especially on social networks, has a negative impact on public discourse. “In addition, there have been a number of recent cases of physical harassment of journalists performing their professional duties, which raise questions about respect for freedom of the press,” the report said.

It is stated that many of the CEC applicants claimed that there had been violations of the campaign based on rude rhetoric, hate speech, and that they had demanded the cancellation of the registration of some candidates on the lists of individual candidates. Most of the complaints were rejected due to lack of legal grounds. The CEC stressed that the evaluation of individual campaign speeches was not within its competence.

It should be reminded that Ara Zohrabyan, the leader of “Zartonk” party, applied to the CEC for Nikol Pashinyan’s speech containing calls for violence.

International observers report that women have generally been in the background throughout the campaign.

According to experts from European structures, the election process was inclusive, the CEC registered lists of candidates from 22 parties and 4 blocs.

 After the June 10 deadline and after the self-withdrawal of one party, the competition continued with 25 electoral lists with 2498 candidates, of which 925 were women (37%).

“Despite the 30 percent quota, women were clearly pushed into the background during the campaign, with rare speeches. “During the campaign, there were no obvious messages targeting women – national minorities,” the observers said, presenting the results of their monitoring. Only 24 out of 153 speakers during the observed rallies were women (16%), and in 51 (70%) of the 73 campaign events observed, women did not speak.

It should be reminded that these elections were the first where the gender quota was at least 30%, in the previous elections the requirement of 25/75 proportion was applied for the party lists.

Women in election commissions

Women were properly represented in PECs, in contrast to CEC և regional TECs, where they were represented by approximately one-third of the members. This was recorded by European observers and presented the results of their own study, according to which 43% of the TECs observed by the IEOM (International Election Observation Mission) were headed by women.

Women observers

The ODIHR EOM includes 16 experts based in the capital and 26 long-term observers located throughout the country. On election day, 344 observers from 37 countries were sent, including 247 by the ODIHR, as well as a 73-member delegation from the OSCE PA and a 24-member delegation from the PACE. Women made up 41% of the observers. The opening of the voting was observed in 129 polling stations, the election was observed in 1150 polling stations throughout the country. The results were counted in 107 polling stations and tabulated in 32 regional polling stations.

Full text in Armenian