The "Strong Armenia" bloc, led by Samvel Karapetyan, has formally challenged the legitimacy of at least 100,000 votes attributed to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's ruling Civil Contract party during the June 7 parliamentary elections.
According to the Operative Information Center-OMM, citing foreign media reports, the opposition has raised significant concerns regarding the integrity of the electoral process.
Vardevanyan, a representative of the bloc, stated that the votes of approximately 100,000 citizens were entered into the system manually rather than electronically, raising questions about the lack of electronic verification. "We are convinced that, in reality, Pashinyan's party did not secure more than 43-44% of the vote. This indicates that they did not win enough mandates to form a government on their own. This scenario leads us to conclude that if those problematic 100,000 votes had not been included, the current government would have been forced into a second round of voting," he noted.
The parliamentary elections in Armenia took place on June 7. Official results indicated that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's Civil Contract party received 49.825% of the vote. Businessman Samvel Karapetyan's "Strong Armenia" bloc garnered 23.281%, while the "Armenia" bloc, led by former president Robert Kocharyan, received 9.934%. Businessman Gagik Tsarukyan's Prosperous Armenia party secured 3.996% of the vote, failing to secure a seat in the Armenian parliament.
Local observers and opposition figures have reported unprecedented irregularities during the voting process, including allegations of "carousel" voting, ballot stuffing, and instances of open voting. The election period was further marked by the detention of various opposition representatives, fueling ongoing political tensions in the country.
