Armenian prime minister wins snap election even after war defeat

Armenian acting prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s party won parliamentary elections held on Sunday with more than half of all votes, preliminary results showed. His main political rival alleged fraud.

Pashinyan called the snap polls after Armenia suffered a heavy defeat to Azerbaijan in a war over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh late last year. He defeated Russia's favoured candidate, former president Robert Kocharyan.

The Civil Contract Party won 53.9 percent of the vote, according to the Central Electoral Commission. Kocharyan’s bloc garnered 21 percent support. A party needs to win 54 percent of the seats in parliament to form a government alone. Turnout was 49 percent.

Pashinyan called the election after thousands of Armenians took to the streets of the capital Yerevan to protest a peace deal with Azerbaijan. The six-week conflict saw the latter retake control of large swathes of Nagorno-Karabakh that Armenian forces had held since winning a war in the 1990s.

Pashinyan said on Twitter that his party would gain a constitutional majority with at least 71 out of 105 parliamentary seats, “and will form a government led by me”.

The election had been dubbed by local commentators as a referendum on how close Armenia should align itself politically with Russia.

Sunday’s election comprised 21 political parties and four electoral blocs, the Associated Press reported.

Kocharyan’s Armenia Alliance strongly disputed the preliminary election results, which were in sharp contrast to opinion polls held prior to the vote. Several surveys placed the alliance neck-and-neck with Pashinyan’s party.

“Hundreds of signals from polling stations testifying to organised and planned falsifications serve as a serious reason for lack of trust,” Kocharyan’s bloc said in a statement before the results were announced, according to AP. It said it would not recognise them until the “violations” were investigated.

Armenia’s general prosecutor’s office received 319 reports of violations, it said late on Sunday. It has opened six criminal probes of alleged bribes during campaigning.

(This story was updated with vote count in the 3rd paragraph, Pashinyan in 5th.)