Robert Kocharyan, leader of the so-called Armenia bloc which received 9.94% (145,097) of the vote in Armenia’s parliamentary elections, has promised to challenge the results of the vote.
"These elections took place amid widespread pressure from the authorities, arrests of opposition members, unprecedented use of administrative resources, and voting irregularities," Armenia Today quoted him as saying on Monday (8 June).
According to Kocharyan, his political force is "discussing further actions with colleagues in the opposition field" before challenging the vote results. "We will not retreat and will not abandon our trench of struggle," he concluded.
The leader of the Wings of Unity party, former ombudsman Arman Tatoyan, also said that his party documented “numerous cases” of pressure on voters, where citizens “were required to photograph their ballots and then prove that they voted for the ruling party.” The party has initiated a recount.
The head of the Central Election Commission of Armenia, Vahagn Hovakimyan, announced that the final election results will be published on 14 June.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), acting as an international election observer, published a preliminary statement on 8 June, and argued that the “7 June 2026 [Armenian] parliamentary elections offered voters a genuine choice among political alternatives in a well-run process, although direct pressure from abroad, in the form of escalating trade restrictions and security threats, were observed during the campaign, aimed at unduly influencing voters in favour of the opposition”. Read the article on commonspace.eu.
All the panelists argued that the electoral administration managed technical preparations professionally and efficiently and enjoyed stakeholders’ trust. According to the statement, “the election day proceedings were assessed overwhelmingly positively in the vast majority of polling stations observed”.
Source: commonspace.eu with JAMnews and OSCE ODHIR
