What is Davit Harutyunyan shocked by and who does he shock?
Chairperson of the Armenian delegation to PACE Davit Harutyunyan shocked by the form and substance of the press release of the PACE pre-electoral delegation to Armenia wrote an official letter to Chairperson of the PACE ad hoc Committee for observation of Presidential elections in Armenia. “I was shocked by the form and substance of the press release of the PACE pre-electoral delegation to Armenia and feel obliged to address all three negative assessments it contains,” mentioned Harutyunyan in his letter and thoroughly adverted to them.
Let’s remember that the monitoring mission has given a negative assessment to pre-election processes, mostly focusing on the essential inaccuracies of the voter lists. As of the criticism of the inaccuracy of voter lists (unprecedented growth of voters), Harutyunyan said, “The increase of the numbers of voters by 157 thousands between two previous national elections as opposed to the decrease of demographic indicators is conditioned by three major factors: the large number of those born between 1990 and 1994 turning into electoral age which is overweighting the death rate (142 thousands for the period 2008-2012) for about 270 thousands; abrupt increase of number of dual citizens (43.800); and new stricter requirements to passport holders to indicate permanent residency address, which was not the case in the past.
Let’s remember that the RA police recently released the official number of voters – 2.507.960. This is 23 thousand more than the number of voters in parliamentary elections 2012. Thus, Harutyunyan is surprised that the Europeans do not believe in these figures. Is it worth believing it? The picture shows the gender-age pyramid, which is exempted from the data of the National Statistics Service (2011). According to these data, 0-19 year old males make 28,7% of the population and the number of 0-19 year old females is 24,3%. With mathematical calculations we can see that the total number of 0-19 year old males and females makes only 26,4% of the population. Let’s exclude the 19-year olds from the list of 0-19 because they have the right to vote. Having done so, we can see that the number of teenagers makes 25% of the population. It means one third of the population cannot vote because of the age.
Let’s calculate how many voters there may be in Armenia. If we take into account the population census 2011 data, according to which there’re 3,018,000 permanent residents in Armenia, thus the maximum number of voters could be 2.250.000 (the number of permanent residents also includes people that are registered for residence but are not in the country). We should also deduct the number of adult people, who do not have suffrage (people with mental disabilities, those in prisons, etc.). According to the latest information of the department of migration, the negative balance between the number of people leaving from Armenia and those returning is in 2012 exceeded 42,000.
If we put all these numbers together and compare with the announced number of 2,507,960, we will be surprised.
Now let’s go back to David Harutyunyan’s announcements. The number of people with dual citizenship has grown by 43,800. It is worth mentioning that the number of dual citizenships has grown not only due to the fact that Diaspora Armenians have applied for citizenship, but many of local Armenians have left for other countries and got citizenship, meanwhile maintaining their citizenship from back home. For example, the number of people that left from the country in the framework of the Russian Compatriots project is huge and even if they have received Russian citizenship, they still keep their Armenian passports. In other words, increased number of dual citizens does not necessarily mean increased number of voters – it may be the vice versa.
Davit Harutyunyan also said that many children were born in 1990-1994, who have suffrage now. “In 1990-1994 approximately 270,000 children were born, which was more than the number of people that died (in 2008-2012 being 142,000),” said Harutyunyan. However, records show that birth rate was low in 1990-1994 and even declined after that. This means that the explanation with the number of children born in that period is not justified.
If processes continue with the same logic, it will not be surprising if one day the number of voters reaches the number of population. By the way, it is not excluded that this is what it is now because there are opinions that the population is 2,5 million now. This is exactly the number of voters announced officially.
In a word, what is shocking is not the announcements of Europeans, but the persistence of the government to represent the number of the population as if all of them are voters.
By Babken Tunyan
