Armenian prime minister’s party takes most votes in parliamentary election;
observers note improvements

AVET DEMOURIAN, AP Worldstream
Published: May 14, 2007

The party of Armenia’s prime minister garnered the most votes in
parliamentary elections, officials said, as foreign observers praised
the vote and opposition parties accused authorities of fraud.

Prime Minister Serge Sarkisian’s Republican Party was leading in the
list of five parties topping the 5 percent minimum for seats in the
131-seat National Assembly, the Central Elections Commission said
Sunday.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, meanwhile, commended the vote, saying it was, on the whole,
better than the previous one four years ago.

"The election campaign was dynamic with extensive media
coverage. Election day was calm, with no major incidents reported, but
a few cases of fraud schemes were observed," the OSCE’s election
monitoring team said in a report. "Some procedural problems arose
during the count and tabulation of votes as well as isolated cases of
deliberate falsifications."

The organization also said there were some problems and
inconsistencies in election regulations, and officials were slow to
correct irregularities.

The EU also praised the elections, saying they were "on the whole,
conducted fairly, freely and largely in accordance with the
international commitments which Armenia had entered into."

Central Elections Commission figures said the Republican Party, with
32.8 percent of the vote, was trailed by Prosperous Armenia, with 14.7
percent, and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, with 12.7
percent. Two other parties, Country of Law and Legacy, got less than
10 percent each, but enough to obtain seats in parliament.

Of the 131 seats, 90 are chosen according to proportions that parties
get nationwide and 41 in single-mandate contests.

Roughly 1.37 million people, or about 60 percent of registered voters,
cast ballots in Saturday’s election, officials said.

"I voted for the authorities because I can now see the possibility of
a better life which they will grant me," said Sarkis Ambartsumian, a
44-year-old scientist.

The Country of Law party, meanwhile, said it had noted "mass election
violations," including bribery and improper balloting and
vote-tallying. The party’s representative to the election commission
refused to sign the final protocol and promised to file suit against
election officials to keep final results from being published in the
official register.

Election officials refused to comment on the allegations.

More than 1,000 opposition party members and activists later rallied
in a Yerevan square, vowing to press their fraud claims.

"They stole our votes again," said Narine Saakian, a 52-year-old
homemaker. "The authorities are becoming more and more cynical with
every passing year in their efforts to enrich themselves at the
expense of simple people. I go to these radical rallies out of
desperation."

Most political observers said Republican Party would likely join with
Prosperous Armenia and Armenian Revolutionary Federation to form a
ruling coalition and return Sarkisian to the post of prime minister.

Prosperous Armenia is a comparatively new player on the political
scene, having been formed in 2004, and its origins are unclear. Some
observers suggest it was formed at the initiative of President Robert
Kocharian as a way to have a counterbalance to the Republican Party.

All the main parties call for addressing economic and social problems,
including finding ways to increase the population of about 2.9
million. The population has dropped sharply in the post-Soviet period
as the birth rate declined and an estimated 900,000 people emigrated,
largely because of economic problems.

The tiny South Caucasus nation has few natural resources and its
economic development is restricted by the closing of its borders with
Azerbaijan and Turkey _ both of which were shut in protest against
ethnic Armenian troops taking control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory
in Azerbaijan, during a six-year conflict in the early 1990s.