No party secures majority in Gyumri elections

PanARMENIAN.Net - Although the ruling party leads in Gyumri's local election, it falls short of a majority, prompting potential opposition coalitions to decide the mayor's seat.

The Central Electoral Commission (CEC) of Armenia has published the preliminary results from 81 out of 82 polling stations in Gyumri following the March 30 snap local elections. According to these figures, none of the political forces managed to secure a majority of the votes.

Out of 109,458 registered voters in the city, 46,680 participated in the election.

The parties that passed the electoral threshold include:

• Civil Contract Party (Sarik Minasyan) – 36.21%
• Armenian Communist Party (Vardan Ghukasyan) – 20.5%
• Our Strength is in Unity alliance (Martun Grigoryan) – 15.5%
• My Powerful Homeland (Ruben Mkhitaryan) – 8.08%
• Our Homeland alliance (Karen Simonyan) – 6.11%, reports Factor.am .

Since no single party crossed the 50% mark, forming a coalition will be necessary to elect the head of the community. Four of the five parties that passed the threshold are in opposition and have stated during the campaign that they do not intend to form a coalition with the ruling Civil Contract Party. If these opposition forces unite, Gyumri may have an opposition mayor, according to Armenpress.

In the Parakar community of Armavir province, preliminary data shows that 11,526 citizens voted, representing 54.97% of the 20,967 registered voters.

Four political forces contested the election in Parakar:

• Civil Contract Party (Ludvig Gyulnazaryan)
• Unity alliance (Valodya Grigoryan)
• National Progress Party (David Minasyan)
• Stability Party (Gor Saribekyan)

According to the Electoral Code, the threshold in local proportional elections is 4% for parties and 6% for party alliances.