"Strong Armenia" Declares Its Intention to Seek the Annulment of the Local Election Results in Stepanavan

ArmInfo. The “Strong Armenia” party intends to have the results of the October 25 elections to the local self-government bodies (LSGBs) in the Stepanavan community of Lori Province declared invalid. Constitutional law specialist and member of the council of the “Strong Armenia” party Goar Meloyan reported this on her Facebook page.

She said that, in this regard, the political force had submitted an application to Territorial Electoral Commission No. 25. According to her, it presented cases of deliberate circumvention of the legal norms stipulated by the Electoral Code, aimed at misleading voters and obtaining votes through deception. “In particular, we drew attention to the fact that the ‘Civil Contract’ party, realizing that it would not be able to secure the support of a sufficient number of voters solely through its own candidate, decided to mislead citizens by also ensuring the participation in the elections of Armen Grigoryan, who was initially a member of the ruling party but headed the electoral list of the ‘Gortsarar’ (Entrepreneur) party. Meanwhile, the ‘Gortsarar’ party, which had initially assured that under no circumstances did it intend to give its votes to the ‘Civil Contract’ party, circulated a statement saying that they intended to run in Stepanavan under the auspices of the ruling party,” Meloyan pointed out.

She stressed that this was nothing other than a violation of the constitutional, legal and electoral foundations. In this regard, the legal expert also recalled that, according to Armenia’s Electoral Code, one candidate cannot be included on more than one party list. “But it turns out that the candidate of the ‘Gortsarar’ party, being first on the political force’s list, also represented the ‘Civil Contract’ party and is now manipulating this issue. This is permissible only if the candidate participates as part of a bloc. It turns out that the logic of electoral legislation was distorted,” Meloyan stated.

In addition, according to her, the application presented cases of law enforcement interference in pre-election campaigning and counterpropaganda against the opposition, systematic use of administrative resources, obstruction of pre-election campaigning by restricting freedom of assembly, cases of providing voters with material incentives, and hundreds of technical and substantive violations. In Meloyan’s opinion, all these circumstances indicate a serious distortion of the electoral process, which is nothing other than another blow to the fundamental foundations of a democratic state.

“We had no particular expectations regarding the outcome of the consideration of the application submitted. Although the application was rejected, appropriate legal measures will be taken, and all this information will be presented to our international partners,” the party member concluded.

It should be recalled that in Stepanavan, the “Gortsarar” party received the largest number of votes—41.54%. The “Civil Contract” party received 35.32%, the “Strong Armenia” party—19.68%, and the “Republic” party—3.41%.