This announcement made by Stepan Demirchyan was indirectly aimed at the opposition parties as well.
During a press conference held on Monday, the leader of the People’s Party of Armenia contradicted the evaluations of the international observers claiming that the parliamentary elections that took place on Saturday in Armenia were one step forward compared with the previous ones and noted:
“These elections were unprecedented in the sense of distribution of electoral bribes. If they are talking about progress, then it should be stated that these elections were one step forward with regards to the falsifications.”
The fact that the People’s Party of Armenia wasn’t able to exceed the 5% threshold to enter parliament was, according to Stepan Demirchyan, thanks to the “efforts” of the political parties that had worked against them for years. In fact, he says, both pro-government and opposition parties had spread black PR against them. And whereas the authorities have solved two issues by leaving him out of parliament, his oppositional allies have supported the authorities by damaging the party’s reputation.
“The attempts to discredit the People’s Party of Armenia reached unprecedented heights. Our party is quite possibly the only party that received this much black PR. It’s just that our party has always been a target for many different political parties and/or activists and they want to get at the “throat” of the People’s Party of Armenia. They are spreading lies about the party because they understand that it is a party based on principles, whom the people trust, and they are doing everything they can to get rid of it,” announced Demirchyan, adding: “The existing authorities tried to solve two issues by falsifying the elections. First, they did everything so that the People’s Party of Armenia wouldn’t be in parliament and the second goal was prospective and was an attempt to weaken the possible presidential candidates.”
According to Demirchyan, the elections can’t be considered free, fair and transparent and the current parliament has not been formed by the expression of free will of the people.
“The numbers given and drawn for the People’s Party of Armenia don’t correspond to reality. It is clear that there were threats made too, and that people were under pressure. All of the well-known methods were applied. People were even afraid to approach us. Of course, the distribution of electoral bribes was unprecedented. This country has had an army of falsifiers for a long time now, but that army continues to grow and now they want to enlist a considerable part of the needy which, unfortunately, was a success and played an essential role in the elections,” announced Demirchyan, adding that the People’s Party of Armenia is not getting ready to debate the results of the elections in the Constitutional Court.
With regards to the evaluations of the elections by the international observatory missions, Demirchyan said:
“It is not the first time that we see that the observers are after their cosmopolitan interests more than democracy. I understand the observers. On the outside it appears that everything is normal, but I have said several times that those pressures are in the inside. But in many cases everything is done out in the open as well. This time everything took place outside the polling stations. The authorities organized everything very well and there was a clear, elaborated network.”