Samvel Karapetyan Calls the Elections a “Disgrace”

YEREVAN — Narek Karapetyan, leader of the Strong Armenia alliance, which received more than 340,000 votes according to preliminary results, said his political force would present a detailed assessment of the election and outline its next steps after the final count is completed.

“We will make a more comprehensive statement once the reporting and counting process is fully completed,” he said.

In a statement delivered from his residence, billionaire businessman Samvel Karapetyan described the elections as a “disgrace,” claiming that his supporters had faced persecution and violence throughout the past month.

Karapetyan said that 70 members of his team had been detained and more than 700 people arrested.

“They decided to engage in inexplicable actions on election day. There has never been a case in world history where vote counting is interrupted and officials say they will announce the results at 9 a.m. the next morning. Seeing that their results were declining every minute, they stopped the count,” he alleged.

Karapetyan accused the authorities of electoral fraud but did not specify where violations had occurred or provide evidence to support his claims.

Strong Armenia finished second among opposition forces. The Armenia Alliance, led by former President Robert Kocharyan, received more than 145,000 votes. Kocharyan’s bloc has not yet announced whether it will take its parliamentary mandates or pursue another course of action.

Meanwhile, the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) found itself in a controversial position. While preliminary online results initially showed the party surpassing the 4 percent electoral threshold, later updates from the Central Electoral Commission reduced its support to 3.996 percent, leaving it below the threshold required for parliamentary representation.