Prime Minister on Nikol Pashinian on Thursday told relevant government bodies to ensure the freedom and fairness of Armenia’s upcoming general elections which he is expected to win by a landslide.
“We must not just hold the best elections in the history of the Third [Armenian] Republic. We must hold elections meeting the highest international standards,” he said at a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
In this context, Pashinian warned against any abuse of government levers that could influence the election outcome. He said that civil servants, school teachers and other public sector employees must not be forced to campaign for any political force, something which was commonplace in past Armenian elections.
Pashinian went on to warn that any election official miscounting ballots or committing other types of fraud would be strictly punished. He also ordered law-enforcement bodies to prevent vote buying, which was reportedly widespread in the last parliamentary elections held in April 2017.
The Armenian police chief, Valeri Osipian, has already promised tough action against any attempts to hand out vote bribes. He issued similar warnings ahead of the September municipal elections in Yerevan that were marked by very few reports of serious fraud.
In their assessment of the 2017 polls won by Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party, Western observers cited “credible information about vote-buying and pressure on civil servants and employees of private companies.”
Pashinian tops the list of his My Step alliance’s candidates for the December 9 snap elections. The bloc is widely regarded as the election favorite thanks to the 43-year-old premier’s popularity.
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