“The Council of Europe welcomes the conduct of the May 31 mayoral race. The overall organization of the elections has been broadly carried out in compliance with European standards,” Nigel Mermagen, the British head of the mission, said, presenting its preliminary assessment of the polls. Mermagen did not elaborate on irregularities witnessed by members of his team, saying that they will be detailed in a final election report to be submitted to the CLRAE by October. More importantly, he made clear that the Europeans believe those irregularities did not call into question the legitimacy of the official vote results that gave a landslide victory to President Serzh Sargsyan’s Republican Party of Armenia (RPA). “They had some influence on the final results but not to the extent that the legitimacy of the final results was prejudiced, as far as we could see at this moment in time,” said the Council of Europe official. To the question of our reporter whether the elections would be considered democratic if conducted in the same manner in the UK Mermagen avoided answering. “I’ll never have the opinion that these elections were ideal,” says Mermagen.
