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    Categories: 2021

Opposition ‘Armenia’ Faction MP: Premier Pashinyan gave best assessment of local elections

News.am, Armenia
Dec 6 2021

PM Nikol Pashinyan probably gave the best assessment of the local elections in terms of results, by admitting that the ruling Civil Contract Party (CCP) failed in this election. Artur Khachatryan, an MP of the opposition "Armenia" Faction of the National Assembly, told this to a press conference Monday.

According to Khachatryan, Pashinyan attempted—in his respective Facebook past—to justify this failure by saying that they are busy with external security challenges, had more important things to do, that's why they registered worse results than they expected, as they did not buy votes and no electoral fraud was committed.

"But I want to recall that on the eve of these elections, the state had allegedly accidentally opened the 'purse' of social assistance to the provinces and communities. This is not just a coincidence. Also, the [community] enlargement ‘bouquets’ are designed in a way that they [i.e., the authorities] be able to collect as many votes as possible, which is also not a coincidence. Let me remind that before the elections, the opposition candidates were persecuted. Let me also remind that they had mobilized all their administrative resources. But despite all this, they have lost," Khachatryan said.

He noted that in only 15 of the 36 enlarged communities the CCP managed to get enough votes to form a local government on its own, whereas in the other 21 communities the non-governmental forces can form a majority in eight of them, on their own, and in 13 others—in a coalition.

"We can record that after 2018, the authorities lost more than 200,000 votes in 2021, and continue their chain of defeats. The authorities have lost in Kapan, Gyumri, Meghri, Goris, Akhuryan, and this is an ongoing process. If this continues, they will very soon see that they have no support [at all]," the opposition lawmaker stressed.

Emma Nadirian: