ARMENIAN RULING PARTY WINS YEREVAN MAYOR’S SEAT

June 1 2009
Turkey

Armenia’s ruling party candidate has been re-elected mayor of the
capital Yerevan, official results showed.

Armenia’s ruling party candidate has been re-elected mayor of the
capital Yerevan, official results showed on Monday, dashing opposition
hopes of winning support due to the country’s economic crisis.

When polling stations closed last night, the opposition said the
election was rigged and it would hold protest rallies.

International observers said the election met European standards
although there were some faults.

"This election was a step forward in comparison with elections held
in September 2008," Nigel Mermagen, head of the Council of Europe
observation mission, told a news conference.

"Some shortcomings were recorded," he said.

The Central Election Commission said President Serzh Sarksyan’s
Republican Party won more than 40 percent of the votes in the city,
which accounts for 1.1 million of Armenia’s 3.2 million people.

The party backed incumbent mayor Gagik Beglaryan.

Prosperous Armenia, which is a ruling party’s ally, won around 22
percent. The opposition Armenian National Congress led by former
President Levon Ter-Petrosyan won around 17 percent of the votes in
the 65-seat city council.

Economic hardships

Ter-Petrosyan, Armenia’s first president after independence from the
Soviet Union in 1991, lost to Sarksyan in presidential elections in
February 2008. Ter-Petrosyan’s supporters cried foul and 10 people
were killed in resulting unrest.

In the run-up to the mayoral election, the opposition hoped it could
capitalise on discontent over the economy, which has dived with the
global economic crisis and the impact of strategic ally Russia sliding
into recession.

GDP in the landlocked country is forecast to contract by 5.8 percent
in 2009 and prices have crept up since the Central Bank floated the
dram currency in March.

Sarksyan has also faced criticsim fire for a plan to normalise ties
with Turkey after a century of hostility over the World War One
killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.

Many Armenians welcomed the deal in the belief Turkey would open
their border, which Ankara closed in 1993 over Armenia’s backing for
ethnic Armenian separatists fighting a war in Azerbaijan’s breakaway
Nagorno-Karabakh region.

But Turkish leaders have since said the frontier will remain shut
until Armenia makes concessions on Nagorno-Karabakh.