The official figures, as the report records them: Civil Contract 49.75%, the Strong Armenia alliance 23.27%, the Armenia alliance 9.92%, Prosperous Armenia 3.99%, just below the threshold, on a turnout of 58.97%, well above 2018 and 2021, Public Radio of Armenia reported at 15:52. Observers recorded violations in about 44% of the precincts they observed. Election day itself was orderly, with the process assessed positively in the vast majority of polling stations observed, while the campaign produced more than 200 criminal investigations into vote buying and related offences, most of them against opposition figures.
“The Russian Federation’s interference and foreign information operations reached a scale unprecedented in a Council of Europe member State,” the report says, as Armenpress quotes it. Russia used economic sanctions, embargoes on farm produce and threatened revisions of gas supply, and sharp diplomatic rhetoric to push the vote towards opposition-aligned parties; the endorsements of the ruling party by the US president, the French president and senior EU officials “were also perceived as external interference, albeit without the enormous coercive dimension associated with Russian actions”. The pressure did not carry the vote, and the result, in the passage Konjoryan quoted, showed a society’s democratic stability despite it and despite the shortcomings noted.
Observers recorded violations in about 44% of the precincts they observed.
Its recommendations run from safeguards against foreign interference and a more independent election administration to campaign finance, the use of administrative resources, the impartiality of the public broadcaster, transparency of private media ownership and an end to the selective prosecution of opposition figures. Konjoryan’s reading, on Armenpress at 15:38: the newly elected authorities received a clear mandate from the people, which they must now fulfil with honour. The same afternoon he wrote on Facebook that the plenary in Strasbourg had elected him a vice-president of the assembly from Armenia.
The report landed a day after four communities voted. In Tumanyan the Civil Contract list headed by Suren Tumanyan took 95.1% on a turnout of 59.96%, the minister of territorial administration David Khudatyan said; turnout was 57.06% in Ferik, 35.29% in Lermontovo and 45.20% in Arzni. The nationwide local elections on 25 October are the next test of the mandate the report describes.