The court consolidated petitions from seven groups, among them Samvel Karapetyan's Strong Armenia, Robert Kocharyan's Armenia alliance and Gagik Tsarukyan's Prosperous Armenia. Hearings ran from 26 June. The bench can uphold the Central Election Commission's 14 June certification, invalidate the vote, invalidate it and redistribute mandates, or order a second round.
The arithmetic is not close. The CEC recorded Civil Contract on 49.74%, Strong Armenia on 23.27% and the Armenia alliance on 9.92%. A recount of 86 stations annulled three, too few to move the outcome.
The opposition's own case concedes the count and attacks the conditions. It argues the vote was neither free nor fair, and describes a court that lacks independence. Yuriy Avagyan of Yerevan's Restart Foundation reads it as a legitimacy problem more than a counting problem. Karapetyan is under house arrest, and several Strong Armenia figures are in custody on vote-buying charges the authorities brought and the opposition calls political. The government denies any violations and accuses the opposition of buying votes.
So a court widely seen as close to Nikol Pashinyan is about to certify an election the losers call unfree. Whatever the reasoning, that is the position it occupies.
A court widely seen as close to Pashinyan is about to certify an election the losers call unfree.
The practical stakes are downstream. Pashinyan keeps his three-fifths majority, which lets him pass constitutional laws and fill senior posts. If the court upholds and the opposition takes its seats, the crisis stays procedural. If blocs refuse to sit, or Karapetyan pursues the street struggle through constitutional means he has floated, Armenia's Western turn acquires a domestic contest to match the external one, from the CSTO-exit question to the Zangezur route.
We do not publish on Saturday, so this frames the ruling before it lands. If the verdict breaks hard, it is a candidate trigger for the Caucasus longread we are holding.