YEREVAN -- Armenia’s Central Election Commission says official results from snap parliamentary elections confirm a landslide victory for acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party while rejecting opposition demands to annul the results.
According to the final results, Pashinian’s party received 53.91 percent of the vote in the June 20 elections, while the Hayastan Alliance of former President Robert Kocharian and the Pativ Unem Alliance affiliated with former President Serzh Sarkisian got 21.90 percent and 5.22 percent of the vote respectively.
Even though Pativ Unem failed to clear the 7 percent threshold set for alliances to enter parliament, it has been allowed representation since by law, there must be at least three parties present in the legislature.
According to the Central Election Commission, the results translate into 71 seats for Civil Contract -- a constitutional majority -- while Hayastan and Pativ Unem will control 29 and seven mandates in the 107-seat National Assembly.
The alliances of the two former presidents, as well as the Zartonk National-Christian Party, which also failed to clear the 5 percent threshold for political parties, had applied to the Central Election Commission for the election results to be ruled invalid due to alleged irregularities.
They have claimed that Pashinian violated the constitution by continuing to act as prime minister after May 10 when parliament was dissolved, as well as alleging the use of administrative resources by the ruling party, as well as other alleged violations on election day that they claimed had an impact on the outcome of the vote.
The Central Election Commission rejected the demands by opposition groups to annul the results, instead reaffirming them.
The Kocharian-led Hayastan Alliance has said it will challenge the election results via the Constitutional Court.
In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service late last week, Eoghan Murphy, head of the OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission in Armenia, said that violations and incidents witnessed during the elections did not impact the validity of their results.
“It was a competitive election. People could campaign freely, candidates were able to go and organize events and they organized events. But also the voters had choice in the number of parties running and voters were able to attend events if they wanted to attend events. And when it came to election day, people were able to go out and vote in a well-managed process where they could cast their vote, and that vote would be both respected and reflected in the overall results,” Murphy said.
