Armenians voted on Sunday in parliamentary elections that will extend or end Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s eight-year rule and pro-Western foreign policy increasingly resented by Russia.
Sixteen political parties and two alliances vied for over 100 seats in Armenia’s parliament. The opposition alliances led by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian and former President Robert Kocharian as well as Gagik Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) are the ruling Civil Contract party’s main challengers. Among other opposition contenders are former human rights ombudsman Arman Tatoyan’s Wings of Unity party, former President Levon Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress and Edmon Marukian’s Bright Armenia Party.
The elections were held solely under the system of proportional representation. The parties needed to win at least 4 percent of the vote in order to be represented in the new parliament. The legal threshold for blocs is set at 8 percent.
“My expectations are the _expression_ of the free will of Armenian citizens,” Pashinian told reporters after casting a ballot at a polling station in Yerevan.
When asked what he will do if he loses the elections, he said: “Whatever the people decide, we will do it.”
Karapetian and his bloc are widely regarded as the ruling party’s number one challenger. The 60-year-old billionaire and philanthropist, who has made his fortune in Russian, decided to enter politics following his controversial arrest in June last year.
Under the Armenian constitution, he cannot become prime minister or even parliament deputy because of also having Russian and Cypriot citizenships. Strong Armenia’s list of election candidates is topped by Karapetian’s nephew Narek.
“I voted for a big change in our country and a resurgent Armenia where Armenians are mostly focused on building their country and not on hurting or fighting each other,” Narek Karapetian said at a polling station in the northern town of Tashir.
The election campaign was marked by Pashinian’s threats to jail and “take out” the three top opposition leaders and mass arrests of their supporters on vote-buying charges rejected by the opposition as politically motivated. Karapetian’s bloc has been the main target of the crackdown which it believes is aimed at boosting Civil Contract’s electoral chances. Dozens more of its members and supporters as well as six of its election candidates were arrested on Saturday.
The Anti-Corruption Committee, one of the two law-enforcement agencies spearheading the crackdown, said earlier on Saturday that it detained 194 people in recent weeks. It said that 84 of them are currently in jail or under house arrest.
Pashinian’s party itself has been accused by its political opponents and some media of using public money to buy votes. None of its members or other government loyalists has been prosecuted on election-related charges.
The parliamentary race has also led to a further deterioration of Armenia’s relations with Russia, its traditional allies irked by the Armenian government’s efforts to close ties with the West and, in particular, join the European Union. After Yerevan hosted two European summits in early May, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the South Caucasus nation should choose “as soon as possible” between European integration and its continued membership in a Russian-led trade bloc essential for the Armenian economy.
In the following weeks, Russia effectively banned on sanitary grounds the multimillion-dollar import of Armenian agricultural products and beverages. On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman urged Armenian voters to “save” their country.
The EU responded by accusing Moscow of seeking to influence the election outcome through “economic coercion.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday that the EU will provide Yerevan with at least 50 million euros ($58 million) in urgent economic assistance.
The three main opposition forces running in the polls have blamed Pashinian for the sanctions and pledged to repair Russian-Armenian elections if they defeat the ruling party. Moscow has not openly backed any of them. Nevertheless, Pashinian has repeatedly branded them as Russian “agents” on the campaign trail.
U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed Pashinian for reelection on May 28, citing the latter’s commitment to opening a U.S.-run transit corridor for Azerbaijan. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan signed in the following days a new bilateral agreement on practical modalities of the transit arrangement. Rubio suggested on June 2 that the Russians would like to see Pashinian voted out of office because they are “less than happy about our engagement” in Armenia.
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