Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has abused his administrative resources ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections, a top representative of Armenia’s leading anti-corruption watchdog said on Thursday.
Pashinian rallied and addressed supporters during working visits to two Armenian provinces on Monday and Wednesday. He also discussed the conduct of the December 9 elections with local government officials.
Former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK) has denounced those gatherings, accusing Pashinian of using his government levers for electoral purposes. HHK representatives also argue that the election campaign is supposed to start on November 26 in accordance with a timetable set by Armenia’s Central Election Commission (CEC).
Varuzhan Hoktanian, the program director of the Yerevan-based Anti-Corruption Center affiliated with Transparency International, voiced similar concerns, while calling the HHK criticism disingenuous.
“It’s a bit unpleasant to see the Republican Party, which resorted to the same practice [while in power,] talk about that,” Hoktanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). “But it’s certainly not good that that [practice] is being repeated now to a certain extent.”
“If we apply international standards for administrative resources, then yes, that is an abuse of administrative resources,” Hoktanian said of Pashinian’s pre-election actions.
“It’s just that Armenian law does not clearly define abuse of administrative resources,” the activist went on. “There is no notion of administrative resources in our criminal or administrative codes. Having said that, under those codes, some crimes or violations related to that are punishable only during [official] election campaigns.”
“For example, when the Republicans were engaging in that and we were talking about that in the past, they were saying that there can be no abuse of administrative resources before the start of the election campaign. Our new authorities should therefore clarify to what extent they intend to stick to international standards here.”
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian greets supporters in Ashtarak, November 21, 2018.
The HHK was widely accused of heavily relying on government resources during Sarkisian’s decade-long rule. Many public and even private sector employees were reportedly pressured to attend its campaign rallies and vote for HHK candidates in presidential, parliamentary and local elections.
“We can see that Pashinian and his government are doing, on a larger scale, something for which they had for years criticized Republican governments,” the chief HHK spokesman, Eduard Sharmazanov, insisted on Thursday.
Pashinian allies continued to deny any wrongdoing, however. Alen Simonian, a senior member of the premier’s My Step alliance, said Pashinian toured the regions solely in his prime-ministerial capacity and did not break any laws.
“Mr. Pashinian has visited the regions since the first day [of his tenure,]” Simonian told reporters. “I can rule out the [bad] things that have happened before,” he said.
Simonian also challenged the HHK to hold its own rallies. Hardly anyone would attend them, he said.
Pashinian likewise dismissed the HHK claims at a news conference held in Yerevan on Tuesday.
He went on to urge supporters to join him on Saturday in marching through the Armenian capital. Pashinian said the demonstration is meant to “once again trumpet the victory of proud citizens of Armenia” who brought down the Sarkisian government in May.
Sharmazanov scoffed at the appeal. “Apparently the prime minister realized that he has been less successful or not successful at all in running the country and developing its economy, and so he decided to do his favorite job: organize marches,” he said.