{"id":280271,"date":"2017-04-28T19:01:13","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T15:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/epress.am\/?p=280271"},"modified":"2017-04-28T19:01:13","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T15:01:13","slug":"armenias-constitutional-court-rules-parliamentary-election-results-are-valid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2017\/04\/28\/armenias-constitutional-court-rules-parliamentary-election-results-are-valid.html","title":{"rendered":"Armenia’s Constitutional Court Rules Parliamentary Election Results Are Valid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Armenia’s Constitutional Court today denied the Armenian National Congress (ANC) and People\u2019s Party of Armenia (PPA) election alliance appeal<\/a><\/span><\/strong> to overturn the decision of the Central Election Commission and annul the results of the April 2 parliamentary elections. According to presiding judge Gagik Harutyunyan, the alliance did not present sufficient proof to show that the election was rigged and that mass media publications about alleged electoral fraud<\/a><\/span><\/strong> were not admissible as substantive evidence.<\/p>\n

In an earlier speech before the Court, Vahe Grigoryan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that the focus of the investigation of this case was entirely on legal issues, whereas \u201cthere are many other issues that should be considered\u201d before the judge renders his verdict. \u201cThe Kelsen model of constitutional jurisdiction allows the Court to look at processes in a more out-of-the-box way and is also able to consider electoral disputes in accordance with broad and contextual analysis,\u201d the lawyer stated, expressing the hope that the Constitutional Court would put this opportunity to good use.<\/p>\n

\u201cEither this instance will become an important arena for finding principles, doctrines, and solutions or it will continue to remain a court which considers disputes regarding improperly equipped voting booths. I hope you will choose the first option,\u201d Grigoryan added. Shortly before the judge issued his verdict dismissing the alliance’s claims, the representatives of the plaintiffs left the courtroom.<\/p>\n

Later, while answering a reporter’s question as to whether the SAS Group staff audio recording<\/a><\/span><\/strong> and the media publications relating to Armenian school principals’ illegal campaigning<\/a><\/span><\/strong> were not sufficient facts to prove that the ruling Republican Party had abused administrative resources to rig the election, defendant Tigran Mukuchyan, the CEC Chairman, said that \u201cthe Commission has listened to this audio recordings and came to a completely different conclusion than the Congress-PPA bloc.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at them objectively and impartially and not with prejudice, the impression is totally different,\u201d Mukuchyan insisted. He added that in his closing remarks he wanted to he \u201csincerely wanted to thank\u201d Armenian National Congress member Levon Zurabyan \u201cfor his great contribution to the issue of installing video cameras at polling stations. It allowed us to ensure that the election process was conducted in a transparent and lawful manner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you look at them objectively and impartially and not with prejudice, the impression is totally different,\u201d Mukuchyan insisted. He added that in his closing remarks he wanted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[66033,66058],"tags":[66946,13317,66947],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}