The elections in Armenia are cause for disappointment: Oleg Matveychev

Oleg Matveychev, deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, has commented to Alpha News on the parliamentary elections held in Armenia.

“The big question is whether this can even be called an election, given the enormous number of violations not only in the vote-counting process, but throughout the electoral campaign itself. Political repression, arrests, internet purges, account deletions, total information dominance in the media, pressure, persecution and arrests, all of this in itself suggests that whatever the result, it cannot be called democratic. And when questions also arise about the vote count, when a huge number of people wishing to fly to Armenia were denied entry, had their Armenian passports confiscated, were detained at borders, intimidated, sent warnings that they would be mobilized into the army and so on, what on earth was all that?” the politician said.

In the deputy’s view, the electoral campaign and the voting process itself were accompanied by numerous violations, casting doubt on the democratic nature of the elections.

“And even under these conditions, Pashinyan fell short of 50%, which in my view indicates that his actual support in society amounts to a quarter of citizens at most. It turns out that a minority will be imposing its will on the majority. We can see that such tendencies are becoming increasingly common in Europe as well. This was the case, for example, in France, where after the parliamentary elections, parties that had received fewer votes joined forces and formed a government,” Matveychev said.