RFE/RL – Armenian Election Results Questioned By European Observers

In a report officially presented during a session of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) on Monday, they concluded that the parliament’s composition does not reflect “the full spectrum of participating forces nor the preferences of all valid voters.”

A PACE delegation monitored the elections along with other Western observers who represented the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Union. They described the vote as largely democratic in their joint preliminary findings that contrasted with serious fraud allegations made by the Armenian opposition.

The separate report drawn up by the PACE delegation paints a more critical picture. In particular, it says that the elections were not rerun in three precincts where Armenia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) cancelled vote results due to reported irregularities. The CEC, which is headed by a longtime collaborator of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, said that the decision did not have an impact on the overall election outcome.

Critics of the Armenian government dismissed those claims, arguing that according to the CEC tally, the opposition Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) led by businessman Gagik Tsarukian fell just several dozen votes short of clearing the 4 percent threshold for entering the parliament. The BHK’s exclusion enabled Pashinian’s Civil Contract party to gain a 60 percent parliamentary majority required for enacting key laws and installing senior law-enforcement officials and judges.

The PACE monitors emphasized this fact in their report. The BHK “might have crossed” the vote threshold had the results in the three precincts been added to the national tally, they said, adding that the CEC made the decision “without substantiated justification.”

“There is a risk that a significant proportion of the electorate is left without effective representation, given how close the result achieved by the Prosperous Armenia party is to the 4 percent electoral threshold,” reads their report.

“Furthermore, the parliamentary composition did not match the full spectrum of participating forces nor the preferences of all valid voters,” it adds.

The official election results have been rejected as fraudulent by all major Armenian opposition groups. They cite the BHK’s exclusion from National Assembly as another proof of their allegations denied by Pashinian and his political allies.

Narek Karapetian, the parliamentary leader of the main opposition Strong Armenia alliance, aired a live Facebook video just as he attended the PACE session in Strasbourg during which the head of the PACE’s monitoring team, Damien Cottier, presented the report.

“Cottier is simply destroying the Armenia authorities’ fake propaganda regarding the Armenian elections,” he claimed.

“This proves once again that it is impossible to cover up the truth,” BHK spokeswoman Iveta Tonoyan said, for her part. “No matter how much they try to hide fraud, sooner or later it comes to light.”

The Armenian government and the CEC did not immediately react to the criticism. Some of Pashinian’s political allies instead seized upon other parts of the PACE monitors’ report favorable to the authorities in Yerevan. Parliament speaker Ruben Rubinian cited the report’s conclusion that Pashinian’s party “received a clear mandate from the people.”

Pashinian repeatedly pledged to jail and “dispossess” his main challengers before and after the disputed elections. Tsarukian was arrested in July as security forces raided and effectively shut down dozens of businesses belonging to him. Another opposition leader, former President Robert Kocharian, was arrested last month.