According to the preliminary official results of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the BHK lacked several dozen votes to clear a 4 percent legal threshold for being represented in the National Assembly. The BHK suggested that the Central Election Commission (CEC) resorted to “trickery” to steal its parliament seats and give the ruling Civil Contract party a more comfortable majority in the assembly.
The opposition party claimed late on Monday to have found glaring discrepancies between the numbers of BHK votes shown in several precinct protocols and the results reported by the CEC. It said that 120 such votes were not added to the CEC tally.
The BHK also initiated vote recounts in dozens of other polling stations. The recounts confirmed on Tuesday afternoon the fact that Tsarukian’s party got 96 votes in two rural precincts in the central Kotayk province. The CEC recorded only 4 such votes there.
A spokeswoman for the electoral body headed by a longtime collaborator of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said that these and other “inaccuracies” will be corrected before the release of the final election results expected on Sunday. The BHK presence in the Armenian parliament will remain in doubt until then.
That presence would deny Civil Contract a 60 percent majority needed for the passage of some key laws and parliamentary confirmation of senior law-enforcement officials and judges handpicked by Pashinian. Opposition leaders claim that the authorities are therefore trying hard to bar the BHK from the parliament because of that.
Meanwhile, the Office of the Prosecutor-General told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that Tsarukian has been charged with large-scale tax evasion and banned from leaving the country pending investigation. It declined to give any details.
Under Armenian law, election candidates cannot be prosecuted without the CEC’s consent. The CEC spokeswoman insisted that the prosecutors have not yet asked the commission for such permission.
Pashinian has repeatedly pledged to imprison Tsarukian as well as the leaders of the two main opposition groups challenging him. During the election campaign, he announced the impending nationalization of Armenia’s largest cement plant belonging to Tsarukian. He went on to promise to “return to the people” the tycoon’s properties, notably a hilltop villa just outside Yerevan, in case of winning the June 7 polls.
Critics portray these statements as further proof that law-enforcement authorities are acting on Pashinian’s illegal orders. Hundreds of opposition members and supporters were detained on vote-buying charges in the run-up to the elections. The arrests continued on election day.