On Tuesday in Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, the incumbent, was reelected. The campaign was well-administered and important measures of transparency have been implemented, the observers said, adding however there was an unclear distinction between the campaign activities of the incumbent and state structures. The limited field of candidates meant that the election was not genuinely competitive, says in interview to the VK Alexandr Skakov, leading expert of the Center of Caucasus and Central Asia studies.
By contrast, an observation mission from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose association of former-Soviet republics, said the election was competitive, open and democratic.
Sargsyan won the election with 58.64 percent of the vote, according to the country’s Central Electoral Commission. Tallies from all 1,988 polling stations showed Sargsyan in first place with 861,167 votes (58.64 percent) followed by US-born former Foreign Minister Raffi Hovhannisyan with 539,672 votes (36.75 percent), the Commission said.
Other candidates, including Soviet-era dissident Paruyr Hayrikyan and former Foreign Minister of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Arman Melikyan, each garnered less than three percent of the vote. Hayrikyan was shot and injured in an apparent assassination attempt in the run-up to the election.
With voter turnout slightly over 60 percent, or 1,518,000 people, the current count guarantees Sargsyan a certain victory in the first round and reelection for a second five-year term in office.
Sargsyan, 59, focused his election campaign on populist promises to fight poverty and unemployment as well as to maintain a tough stance in Armenia's long-running territorial disputes with neighboring Turkey and Azerbaijan.
