The parties led by former human rights ombudsman Arman Tatoyan and fugitive video blogger Vartan Ghukasian claimed that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract rigged the ballot primarily by abusing its government levers and using public money to buy votes.
“On the eve of the June 7 elections, we saw this government do ten times more than what the previous authorities were accused of,” charged Liparit Drmeyan, a senior representative of Tatoyan’s Wings of Unity party.
“An unprecedented amount of administrative resources were used throughout the entire election campaign,” said Drmeyan, who served until last August as the top government lawyer representing Armenia in international courts.
Speaking at a news conference, he said that Pashinian’s party violated campaign funding rules, forced public sector employees across the country to attend its rallies and vote for it, and incentivized other voters with cash handouts and tax exemptions.
According to the official election results, Wings of Unity and Ghukasian’s DOK party each won more than 2 percent of the vote. Only two opposition groups led by billionaire Samvel Karapetian and former President Robert Kocharian easily passed a 4 percent legal threshold for entering the new Armenian parliament.
Another major opposition party led by Gagik Tsarukian fell just short of that threshold after the Central Election Commission (CEC) cancelled results in three precincts and refused to rerun elections there. The Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) as well as Karapetian’s Strong Armenia alliance and Kocharian’s Hayastan bloc portrayed the controversial decision as further proof that the vote was rigged in the ruling party’s favor.
They too are planning to challenge the official results in the Constitutional Court. Their 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.
“Under these circumstances, we don’t find it right to appeal to Nikol Pashinian’s Constitutional Court,” said Edmon Marukian, whose Bright Armenia Party also regards the elections as fraudulent. “We are convinced that the judiciary is completely subordinate to Nikol Pashinian.”
Pashinian, who claimed victory when less than one-fifth of ballots cast were counted, has denied the fraud allegations. He claims that his main election challengers themselves bought hundreds of thousands of votes.