Yesterday the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) described the mayoral elections in Yerevan as deeply flawed and said it will not recognize the legitimacy of their official results. According to the Central Election Commission (CEC), Dashnaktsutyun got only 4.7 percent of the vote, failing to win any seats in Yerevan’s new municipal council. The influential party had already made a poor showing in the February 2008 presidential election. “Once again, what happened was more of the same,” the Dashnaktsutyun leadership said in a statement, alleging widespread vote buying, use of “administrative resources” by the governing parties and voter intimidation by government-connected wealthy individuals. “Unfortunately, our citizens continue to vote by succumbing to administrative pressure from the authorities, vote bribes and demagoguery,” said the statement. “Such elections are a manifestation of criminal irresponsibility towards our state, people, and our children,” it added. Dashnaktsutyun said its representative to the Central Election Commission, Hamlet Abrahamyan, will therefore not sign the final vote results due later this week. Abrahamyan signed, albeit with “reservations,” the preliminary tally released by the CEC on Monday morning. Dashnaktsutyun, which pulled out of Armenia’s governing coalition in late April, at the same time appeared to accept its dramatic election defeat. “We are inclined to look for the reasons for Dashnaktsutyun’s reported performance only in our work,” it said. The ARF made it clear that they will not sign the final protocol on the results of the May 31 election outcome.
