They again accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of thus trying to influence the election results and retain power.

Vahagn Hovakimian, the chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC), reported, meanwhile, that two chairpersons of precinct election commissions were arrested overnight and remained in detention after the start of voting. Hovakimian did not identify them or give reasons for their arrests. The two election officials are apparently affiliated with the opposition.

Former President Robert Kocharian’s Hayastan alliance said about a dozen of its activists in the country’s second largest city of Gyumri were rounded up after searches conducted in their homes early in the morning. Hovik Petrosian, a local Hayastan leader, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service at noon that he still does not know what they are suspected or accused of.

According to Petrosian, the detainees include the manager one of Hayastan’s campaign offices in Gyumri. Law-enforcement officers already raided several of those offices on Thursday before accusing their activists of trying to hand out vote bribes. They did not immediately comment on the latest raids.

Hayastan’s national leadership condemned the authorities’ “illegal actions” and urged supporters not to be intimidated by them.

“This shameful and illegal behavior is not only an attempt to subject the public to informational terror but also a gross violation of electoral rights,” it said in a statement.

Sanvel Karapetian and Gagik Tsarukian, wealthy businessmen leading the two other opposition contenders, also reported fresh arrests of their loyalists after casting ballots at polling stations. In Gyumri, an RFE/RL correspondent witnessed the arrest of three men at a local campaign office of Karapetian’s Strong Armenia bloc.

“We received a report that election bribes are being distributed,” said a law-enforcement officer at the scene.

“Arrests among all our supporters are continuing right now, and more than a hundred people were arrested yesterday,” Karapetian told reporters in Yerevan. “But we are not afraid of that.”

The Russian-Armenian billionaire himself is held under house arrest on various criminal charges brought against him last summer. His bloc has been the main target of pre-election mass arrests made by two law-enforcement agencies.

One of those agencies, the Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC), said on Saturday that it detained 194 people in recent weeks. It said that 84 of them are currently in jail or under house arrest on vote-buying charges denied by the opposition.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian demanded that the ACC and other law-enforcement bodies continue the crackdown during his Civil Contract party’s concluding campaign rally in Yerevan on Friday.

“From this moment on, I demand that the law enforcement system operate more effectively and that election bribes hidden in all the nooks and crannies appear in prisons,” he said, sparking more opposition allegations of abuse of power.

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