Constitutional Court Asked To Scrap Armenian Election Results

In their separate appeals, they all alleged serious fraud which they said influenced the election outcome. The three main opposition contenders accused election officials of miscounting many ballots and claimed that the Armenian authorities forced many public sector employees and security personnel to vote for Civil Contract. They also pointed to mass arrests of their members and supporters, which continued on election day.

The official election runner-up, the Strong Armenia alliance led by billionaire Samvel Karapetian, suggested that the Constitutional Court alternatively order a run-off vote between it and Civil Contract.

According to the Central Election Commission (CEC), Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party won the elections with 49.8 percent of the vote. Strong Armenia came in second with 23.3 percent, followed by former President Robert Kocharian’s Hayastan alliance (almost 10 percent) and Gagik Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) (almost 4 percent).

The BHK fell just short of a legal threshold for entering the Armenian parliament after the CEC cancelled results in three precincts and refused to rerun elections there. This and other opposition contenders portrayed the controversial decision as further proof that the vote was rigged in the ruling party’s favor.

Also challenging the election results are three other opposition parties that fared worse in the ballot. One of them is led by former human rights ombudsman Arman Tatoyan.

Pashinian and his political allies reject the fraud allegations. They say that the three opposition heavyweights themselves secured hundreds of thousands of votes through illegal vote bribes.

“After these processes are completed, everyone will come to terms with the notion that, overall, the elections were held in a free, transparent and legitimate manner,” said Alkhas Ghazarian, a Civil Contract representative.

The vote-buying allegations are at the heart of an election appeal filed by For the Republic party allied to Pashinian. One of its senior members, Ruben Mehrabian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that Strong Armenia, Hayastan and the BHK should not have been allowed to run in the elections in the first place.

Opposition leaders seem skeptical about the success of their appeals, mindful of the fact that eight of the court’s nine judges have been installed by Pashinian’s party.

“It is obvious that this Constitutional Court is incapable of administering justice,” Hayastan’s Artsvik Minasian said after submitting the bloc’s appeal.

Under Armenian law, in case of accepting this and other election appeals for consideration by Sunday evening, the court will have to hand down rulings on them within the next 15 days.