The opposition considers the statements of the RA Prime Minister before summing up the election results as steps to usurp power

ArmInfo. Statements by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan before summing up the election results are just steps to put pressure on the Central Election Commission and usurp power.

The head of the headquarters of the Armenia bloc, Ishkhan Saghatelyan, wrote about this on his Facebook page. Earlier, Pashinyan, during a night briefing, announced victory in the parliamentary elections, despite the fact that by that time the Central Election Commission had processed data from less than a quarter of the polling stations.

“Before you are elected, before you give instructions to the judicial system, you still have to answer for all the violations of election legislation registered today. Dear compatriots, we are currently busy processing data received from polling stations.

Let me remind you that the Central Election Commission has currently summed up the results of a quarter of the polling stations. We’ll talk about the final results and what to do after summing up the results later,” the politician wrote.

In turn, during a late-night press conference, Strong Armenia bloc leader Samvel Karapetyan urged citizens not to panic, as the electoral process is not yet over, and announcing a victory with data from 30% of polling stations available is manipulation. He also drew attention to the unprecedented violations recorded during the election process and ballot processing. "There has never been a case in global practice where the vote count was interrupted with a request to submit the votes in the morning. That is, having noticed a significant drop in the number of votes, they simply stopped the counting," said Samvel Karapetyan, also pointing to the widespread pressure the bloc has been subjected to in recent months: approximately 75 members of the political party have been arrested, and over 700 people have been detained.

The leader of the Wings of Tatev party, Arman Tatoyan, also responded to the situation. He called the Prime Minister's statement about winning the elections and the opportunity to single-handedly form a government unconstitutional. “The Prime Minister does not have the authority to make such statements and claim a single victory when just over 10% of the votes have been counted and even the results for Yerevan have not been summarized.

Moreover, there is still no data for Yerevan polling stations,” Tatoyan noted, adding that the data is updated unsystematically, and the frequency of publication of the results remains unclear. In addition, some indicators first decrease and then increase again. Tatoyan also noted that the Prime Minister is talking about bringing opposition leaders to justice. However, the head of government does not have such powers, and such a statement is a gross violation of the law.

“We consider Pashinyan’s statement to be a clear illegal action aimed at influencing the Central Election Commission, which is a criminal offense,” Tatoyan emphasized. Meanwhile, the leader of the Bright Armenia party, Edmon Marukyan, called the prime minister’s statement a violation of all election norms. “What are you doing? There is no data on Yerevan yet, how did you win?” — Marukyan said in a video message.