 pfa s election report presented at a george washington university seminar thursday november 27 2008 all day united states on november 24 2008 the institute for european russian and eurasian studies ieres of the elliott school of international affairs at the george washington university hosted an event titled the south caucasus a year of ballots and bullets organized jointly with the policy forum armenia pfa the event featured pfa s report on february 19 2008 presidential election in armenia the report is an attempt to look at the multifaceted aspects of the election and postelection developments in armenia with an aim of presenting an independent assessment of what transpired the event was well attended with over 50 washingtonarea academics policy practitioners and graduate students in attendance and was chaired by professor hope harrison director of ieres in his opening remarks before turning to the pfa election report dr asbed kotchikian pfa senior fellow and a lecturer of political science at bentley university boston discussed the realignment of regional politics in the south caucasus visàvis russia by emphasizing the post election political dynamics in azerbaijan russia and armenia the speaker dwelled on the georgianrussian relations after the conflict over south ossetia and how the conflict had an impact on georgia s domestic and foreign political processes he argued that since putin came to power in russia moscow has pursued a more active policy of reestablishing itself as a regional power with a lot of interest in its near abroad furthermore the fact that many politicians in armenia made statements regarding the role of russia in a postelection period was an indicator the of extent of russia s importance in domestic political processes in armenia dr kotchikian brought up pfa election report in the context of the growing role of the civil society in the caucasus particularly in armenia he mentioned that pfa began collecting information about the election and postelection developments in armenia just as those were unfolding a lot of the information and data collected in the days following the election subsequently found their place in the report the report is built on three critical chapters chapter iii lays out evidence of misuse of administrative resources vote buying voter intimidation and other examples of abuse of power to secure a specific outcome chapter iv zooms in on ballot stuffing and artificial augmentation of vote counts and presents ample statistical evidence indicative of the presence of these two types of manipulations the election outcome also sheds some light on the extent of the postelection dissatisfaction and disaffection of a sizable portion of armenia s population finally while reviewing the developments pertaining to the civil society chapter v argues that armenia is critically positioned with a strong and empowered civil society and a determination to realize meaningful change on a national scale the second speaker was christopher kojm a professor of international affairs practice at the elliott school and the former deputy executive director of the 911 commission he spoke about his experience with traveling to armenia in october 2008 as part of a delegation to share the experiences of the 911 investigation with an armenian parliamentary commission looking into violence and deaths during the suppression of demonstrations on march 12 professor kojm s started off his presentation by putting those events in the context for attendees on that night 10 people were killed 100s were injured and over 70 of those arrested still remain in prison in a country of 3 million to translate that into the american context it would be a thousand killed over ten thousand injured and seven thousand imprisoned naturally had that occurred in our country this would have been a topic of discussion and the american people would like to know what happened on that night who is responsible tell us the facts so that our country can deal with them and move forward in his subsequent remarks professor kojm discussed the factors necessary to produce a credible investigation and a credible report first he stressed the importance of participation of professional staff including with experience in forensics as well as access to documents participants and witnesses in his view lack of professional staff attached to the ongoing parliamentary investigation rendered the process less effective furthermore members of the parliamentary commission themselves faced sparse access to documents and records which represents a serious shortcoming for the process second he emphasized that a credible report on a national tragedy requires participation of a broad spectrum of a country s political leaders in the conduct of the investigation the current parliamentary commission is hampered in this respect he said professor kojm ended his presentation on a note similar to the conclusions offered in the pfa s election report he noted that the challenge before all armenians is to build trust across opposition political boundaries and complete the story by revealing the truth of what happened on the night of march 12 and if you tell people what happened you can help heal the nation and move forward the presentations were followed by an active questionandanswer session more pictures from the seminar are available in  photo gallery 