Armenia PM wins snap election despite Nagorno-Karabakh defeat anger

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Mondat registered decisive victory in parliamentary elections. He secured a victory in spite of the anger over Armenia's defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh region with Azerbaijan.

His Civil Contract party bagged nearly 54 per cent votes overcoming anger at his handling of the devastating fight for control of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region to secure a strong majority.

"The people of Armenia gave our Civil Contract party a mandate to lead the country and personally to me to lead the country as prime minister," Pashinyan, 46, said in the early hours of Monday after preliminary results were announced.

He urged supporters to flood the main square in the capital Yerevan for an evening rally to celebrate the victory.

When Pashinyan announced snap polls earlier this year, it was viewed by many as a gamble. Protests against his rule were coming to a head

Those rallies and calls from the opposition for Pashinyan's resignation began last November when he signed an unpopular peace deal mediated by Moscow to end fighting with Armenia's long-standing enemy Azerbaijan.

Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-week war last year which claimed 6,500 lives. Armenia had to hand over swathes of territory to Azerbaijan.

On Monday morning, the prime minister visited a military cemetery and laid flowers at the graves of soldiers.

Sunday's vote was seen as a two-horse race between Pashinyan and his main rival Robert Kocharyan, who led Armenia between 1998 and 2008 and is seen as close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

'An honest leader'

Analysts said many Armenians had cast their ballots for the prime minister because they dreaded the return of old elites, a sentiment echoed on the streets of Yerevan.

"People want to have an honest leader who does not steal and is not an oligarch," said Ruben Kazaryan, a 60-year-old IT worker.

In the wake of the polls, Kocharyan, whose alliance received 21 percent of the vote, alleged foul play.

"Hundreds of signals from polling stations testifying to organised and planned falsifications serve as a serious reason for lack of trust" in the results, Kocharyan's Armenia Alliance said in a statement.

The alliance said it would not recognise results until "violations" were studied.

However election observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe praised the polls as "competitive and well-run" and said that vote counting was "highly transparent."

"The fundamental freedoms key to democratic elections were generally respected," OSCE monitors said in a statement.