By KRIKOR KHODANIAN
For months, opposition forces that had been trumpeting their inevitable victory and insisting that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had no public support were so convinced of their success that they had already begun addressing Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan as “Mr. Prime Minister.”
On June 7, the citizens of Armenia went to the polls and made their choice, and the election results reflected the will of the overwhelming majority of the people. There was nothing surprising or unexpected about the outcome. Every pre-election poll consistently showed that the Prime Minister’s party maintained a commanding lead.
Moreover, Pashinyan did not rely solely on favorable polling. He conducted the most vigorous and comprehensive campaign of any candidate, spending an entire month traveling from region to region, city to city, village to village, and sometimes even building to building, personally asking voters for their support.
The main opposition parties have now appealed to the Constitutional Court, claiming that the elections were rigged and demanding that the results be annulled and new elections held.
The people of Armenia have experienced genuinely fraudulent elections in the past, when ballot boxes were stuffed, ballot boxes were switched, and groups of voters were transported from one polling station to another to vote multiple times. There were also instances in which opposition candidates and their representatives were assaulted and forcibly removed from polling stations. Following each of those fraudulent elections, tens of thousands of citizens spontaneously filled the streets to protest the electoral fraud.
Since 2018, however, those practices have come to an end, replaced by free and well-organized elections, as confirmed by international observers.
Lacking any tangible evidence, the opposition argues that Pashinyan’s campaign speeches created “an atmosphere of fear” that influenced voters, that the arrests of individuals accused of vote-buying created an uneven playing field, and that statements of support for the Armenian state by Western leaders amounted to foreign interference in the election. At the same time, these same opposition forces remain silent about Russia’s direct interference, ranging from disinformation campaigns to economic pressure in the form of trade restrictions imposed on Armenian exports.
Perhaps the most absurd claim is that the increase in pensions before the election should be considered vote-buying, despite the fact that the increase benefited everyone equally, regardless of whether they voted for or against Pashinyan, and that it was not a one-time payment but a permanent increase.
The Central Electoral Commission has acknowledged that certain irregularities occurred during the election. However, it concluded that none of them had a significant impact on the final results.
It is highly likely that the Constitutional Court will reject the opposition’s request to invalidate the election results. However, it may rule in favor of a complaint involving Gagik Tsarukyan’s Prosperous Armenia Party, which narrowly failed to cross the parliamentary threshold by only a few dozen votes.
Whatever the Constitutional Court ultimately decides, the opposition’s current conduct and rhetoric suggest that it will continue to insist that the elections were fraudulent and will likely repeat that narrative throughout the next five years. For the overwhelming majority of Armenia’s citizens, however, these elections were legitimate and accurately reflected the will of the people. Otherwise, they too would have filled the streets to protest the results.
P.S. As expected, the Constitutional Court rejected the opposition’s request to invalidate the election results and left the Central Electoral Commission’s- final results in place.
