Armenia: Opposition Set To Challenge Election Results
By Ria Novosti
The opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC), which narrowly passed the 7-percent threshold for political blocs, is set to challenge Sunday’s parliamentary election results in the Constitutional Court.
The opposition bloc, along with five political parties, has passed the election threshold to make in into Armenia’s parliament.
“We don’t have a finalized legal text yet, but we will lodge complaints to the Constitutional Court on several grounds,” an ANC leader, Aram Manukyan, said.
Another bloc leader said the Armenian National Congress will go ahead with efforts to form a parliamentary faction.
“The ANC will enter parliament and will continue its daily fight to change the political situation,” said another party leader, Nikol Pashinyan.
With more than 90 percent of the ballots counted, President Serzh Sargsyan’s Republican Party gained 44.23 percent of the vote in Sunday’s elections, followed by the Prosperous Armenia party, its partner in the governing coalition, with 30.31 percent.
The three parties that managed to pass the 5-percent threshold to qualify for seats in the 131-strong parliament are the Heritage party, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and the centrist Orinats Erkir (Rule of Law) party, which gained 5.73 percent, 5.66 percent, and 5.43 percent, respectively.
The ANC led by ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, widely seen as the country’s major opposition force, narrowly passed the 7-percent threshold set for political blocs with 7.01 percent of the vote.
The ANC was founded on August 1, 2008, in the wake of violent March rallies over alleged fraud in presidential elections, which Ter-Petrosyan lost to the current head of state. The violence left ten people dead and about 200 injured.
