KARABAKH FRONTRUNNER SWEEPS PRESIDENTIAL VOTE
By Karine Kalantarian in Stepanakert

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
July 20 2007

The candidate backed by the leadership and main political parties of
Nagorno-Karabakh scored a resounding victory in Thursday’s presidential
election, local election officials said on Friday.

According to the preliminary vote results released by the Central
Election Commission (NSS), Bako Sahakian, the former head of Karabakh’s
National Security Service, won 85 percent of the vote.

They showed his main challenger, Masis Mayilian, coming in a distant
second with only 12 percent.

The CEC put the voter turnout at just over 77 percent.

Mayilian quickly conceded defeat, saying that he will congratulate
Sahakian after the publication of the final vote results. "I consider
Bako Sahakian a legitimately elected president and respect the choice
of our people," he told a news conference in Stepanakert.

Mayilian, who was the unrecognized republic’s deputy foreign minister
until recently, described the election as a further boost to Karabakh’s
"democratic image." "Our team has done everything in its power to
give our citizens a real choice and to hold the elections within the
bounds of law," he said.

The Mayilian campaign lodged more than 20 written complaints to the CEC
alleging ballot box stuffing and other irregularities. Most of those
complaints were rejected by the CEC. The commission chairman, Sergey
Nasibian, told RFE/RL that election officials confirmed and prevented
some of the attempted violations reported by the opposition candidate.

Mayilian agreed that the alleged fraud was not serious enough to
affect the election outcome. "Even if there were falsifications,
most votes were properly counted," he said.

The nearly one hundred observers from Armenia, Russia, Europe
and the United States, most of them monitoring the vote in their
private capacity, also described it as largely democratic in separate
statements on Friday.

Leading international organizations and Western governments have
joined Azerbaijan in denouncing the election, saying that it can not
be deemed legitimate in the absence of the disputed region’s former
Azerbaijani minority.

"The European Union underlines that it does not recognize the
independence of Nagorno-Karabakh," the EU’s Portuguese presidency said
in a statement on Thursday. "Neither does it recognize the legitimacy
of these ‘presidential elections,’ which should not have any impact
on the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."

The authorities in Stepanakert and Yerevan have dismissed the
criticism, arguing that the Karabakh Armenians should be represented
in the ongoing peace talks by their elected leaders.

"These elections testify to the success of a statehood anchored in
democratic values," President Robert Kocharian said in a congratulatory
message to Sahakian. "They once again demonstrated the irreversibility
of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’s existence."