US deputy ambassador for political affairs in Armenia Joseph Pennington reported to Washington about mass fraud during the presidential elections in Armenia, WikiLeaks said.
According to WikiLeaks, Pennington reported that Serzh Sargsyan gained 8-14% of votes, but not 52,82% as it was showed by the central election commission of this country. According to the official statistics, former president and opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan gained 21.5% of the votes, but US diplomat said that according to their calculations, Ter-Petrosyan gained 30-35% of the votes.
WikiLeaks said before the decision on Ter-Petrosyan’s appeal, members of the Armenian Constitutional Court were under the pressure by then-president Robert Kocharian and national security secretary Armen Gevorkyan. Pennington said he received this information from member of the Constitutional Court Valery Pogosyan, who asked the US embassy to protect him from the pressures.
According to WikiLeaks materials about Armenia Pennington denied Russian and Armenian media reports about the opposition plans of military coup after the 2008 presidential elections. Pennington reported on his dispatch to Washington that this idea was promoted by Robert Kocharyan during the last period of his presidency. Kocharyan told American diplomats about the probability of military coup because members of deputy defense minister Manvel Grigopyan’s “Erkrapa” group also participated in the protest actions.
According to the documents, US embassy supported Levon Ter-Petrosyan and his supporters, who asked US embassy to put pressure upon the Armenian authority not to use force against the opposition, but the embassy didn’t use all its opportunities of pressure.
US embassy’s dispatches to Washington show that the most critic moment for Serzh Sargsyan and his team came when the citizens arrived in Yerevan from the regions to support the Prime Minister defected to the opposition on February 26. Pennington wrote that no one of the previous governments in Armenia had so heavy responsibility for hard measures against the opposition, which led to human losses, than current government, and therefore the government should take responsibility for cruel crack down on opposition demonstrations.
US embassy’s dispatches also focused on the role of first deputy head of the Armenian presidential administration Michael Minasyan, who told the American diplomats that his father-in-law, president-elect Serzh Sargsyan was against the use of force. But national security adviser to the president Garnik Isagulyan convinced US diplomats that Sargsyan will arrest Ter-Petrosyan.
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