FINAL VOTE RESULTS UPHOLD SARKISIAN LANDSLIDE
By Hovannes Shoghikian

Radio Liberty, Czech rep.
May 21 2007

Armenia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has released the final
results of the May 12 parliamentary elections that formalized the
landslide victory of the Republican Party (HHK) of Prime Minister
Serzh Sarkisian.

According to the official results made public at the weekend, the HHK
won almost 33 percent of votes cast for parties and will directly
hold 64 of the 131 seats in the National Assembly. Forty-one of
those seats were won under the system of proportional representation,
while the 23 others in single-member individual constituencies.

The ruling party is also assured of the backing of nine other,
nominally independent parliamentarians, giving it a de facto absolute
majority in the newly elected Armenian parliament. Sarkisian will
thus be in a position to form his new cabinet without the backing of
other parties loyal to President Robert Kocharian.

The biggest of them, the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), came in
a distant second with 14.7 percent of the proportional vote and 18
parliament seats, 7 of them won in single-member electoral districts.

The BHK was followed by another pro-Kocharian party, the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), which got 12.8 percent of
the vote and will have 16 deputies in the assembly. All of them were
elected on the party list basis, with none of the Dashnaktsutyun
candidates prevailing in the individual constituencies. Virtually
all of those constituencies were swept by wealthy individuals with
close ties to the government.

The final CEC tally also confirmed that only two opposition parties
cleared the 5 percent threshold for entering the parliament under
the proportional system. It showed the Orinats Yerkir Party of former
parliament speaker Artur Baghdasarian winning 6.8 percent of the vote
and 9 parliament seats. The Zharangutyun party of Raffi Hovannisian
will have 7 seats.

Both opposition groups have rejected the official figures
as fraudulent, with Orinats Yerkir planning to challenge them in
Armenia’s Constitutional Court later this week. The CEC chairman,
Garegin Azarian, insisted, however, that Armenia held the most
democratic elections in its history. Western monitors have similarly
said that they largely met democratic standards.

Eighteen other parties and one bloc that contested the elections
will thus not be represented in the new parliament, even though they
polled a combined 27 percent of the vote. The effectively lost votes,
the bulk of them cast for opposition parties, were distributed among
the more successful contenders, earning the HHK an extra 9 seats.