ARMENIAN REPUBLICANS WIN EXTRA PARLIAMENT SEAT
By Hovannes Shoghikian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Aug 27 2007
A candidate of Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party of
Armenia (HHK) won a weekend repeat parliamentary election, solidifying
its control over the National Assembly.
According to official election results, businessman Khachik Manukian
garnered 44.2 percent of the vote in a single-mandate constituency
in central Armenia, defeating two other pro-establishment candidates
and a prominent opposition leader.
Manukian had already been narrowly elected from the electoral district
No. 15 during the May 12 nationwide parliamentary elections amid
allegations of massive vote rigging made by Mnatsakan Mnatsakanian,
his main rival and the mayor of the local town of Talin. The outcry
led the HHK leadership to force Manukian to renounce his parliament
mandate. The vote was re-run as a result.
The official vote results released on Monday showed Mnatsakanian coming
in second with 27.7 percent of the vote. Mnatsakanian was endorsed
by the Prosperous Armenia Party, one of the two junior partners in
the HHK-led governing coalition.
The other coalition partner, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Dashnaktsutyun), also contested the repeat election. Its candidate,
Gurgen Shahinian, finished third with about 20 percent.
Both Mnatsakanian and Shahinian conceded defeat and said they will
not challenge the election outcome. Still, in separate interviews with
RFE/RL, they both complained that the HHK candidate heavily relied on
so-called "administrative resources" which are widely believed to have
greatly helped his party score a landslide victory in the May 12 polls.
Opposition leader Raffi Hovannisian, another major candidate who
was shown winning only 3.4 percent of votes, called the election
deeply flawed but still congratulated Manukian. "The election process
was fundamentally unfree and unfair, with a variety of government
levers and resources being applied to voters in inappropriate and
often unlawful fashion," Hovannisian said in a statement. "Hopefully,
Armenia’s leaders will discharge their responsibilities with greater
integrity and legality in the future."
"In the interim, I congratulate Mr. Manukian and wish him well in
the service of his constituents from the 15th district," he added.
The ballot was found to be largely democratic by election-monitoring
organization It’s Your Choice, which claimed to have deployed observers
in all of the constituency’s 84 polling stations. "There were some
shortcomings," its chairman, Harutiun Hambarstumian, told RFE/RL. "But
they could not have affect the election results."
Not all local observers agreed, however. One of them, representing
a non-governmental youth organization, monitored Sunday’s voting in
Manukian’s native village of Mastara, also part of the constituency.
According to Ashot Ghazarian, Manukian’s loyalists openly agitated
for the HHK candidate despite a legal ban on any campaigning on
polling day.
In another local village, Ujan, the chairwoman of the precinct election
commission, Gyulnara Melkonian, alleged harassment by local residents
sympathetic to Shahinian and called in police. Melkonian claimed
that they became "aggressive" after she thwarted their attempts to
win the Dashnaktsutyun candidate extra votes by illegal means.
Manukian’s victory raises to 65 the number of seats officially held by
the HHK in Armenia’s 131-member parliament. Sarkisian’s party is also
assured of the backing of several ostensibly independent lawmakers,
giving it an absolute majority in the National Assembly.