At dissolution, the Movement 88 Party held three of the 33 seats in the National Assembly. Of those three, in yesterday’s 2020 election, one ran under the Free Motherland-UCA Alliance, one ran under the United Homeland Party, and one did not run again. The table above groups them with their new political teams. The Movement 88 Party will no longer have its own caucus in parliament.

The one seat held by the Independence Generation Party belonged to Ruslan Israyelyan. He had been elected off the Free Motherland party list in the 2010 and 2015 elections but left the party in 2018 to sit as an independent.

The Democratic Party of Artsakh and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation had the size of their caucuses greatly reduced. They have been represented in the Artsakh parliament consistently throughout the 2000s and generally supported non-partisan President Bako Sahakyan’s administration, along with the Free Motherland Party.

The big winner on the parliamentary side isn’t actually eligible for a seat himself. Samvel Babayan started the United Homeland Party and originally declared his intention to run for President. However, he was not eligible to register as a presidential candidate, or even to be included on his own party’s parliamentary candidate list because he did not meet the minimum residency requirements (last ten years for president, last five years for parliament), having just recently moved back to Artsakh after time spent living in Russia and Armenia. Babayan, along with Justice Party presidential candidate Vitali Balasanyan, is a decorated war hero, having earned the highest national honor of Hero of Artsakh. In 2000, he was sentenced to prison for an assassination attempt against then-President Arkadi Ghukasyan. He was released early and left for Russia. In 2017, he was sentenced for money laundering and illegal arms possession in Armenia but was released early again after the Velvet Revolution.

Babayan had endorsed Masis Mayilyan for President. Though Mayilyan was officially nominated as an independent, he campaigned together with the New Artsakh Alliance, neither playing up nor disavowing Babayan’s endorsement.

Babayan’s United Homeland party will actually have the most gender-balanced caucus. Four of its top nine candidates, who can be presumed to become MPs, are women.

As no party will hold a majority of the 33 seats in the National Assembly, it is likely that a governing coalition will be formed. The Free Motherland-UCA Alliance would only need to convince one of the other caucuses to join them. Conversely, it is technically possible (though highly unlikely) that all four smaller parties combine their 17 seats to form a majority themselves. Again, it should be noted that the seat allocations in the table above are still preliminary and are subject to corrections before April 7.

International Reaction

Twelve MPs from Armenia, representing all three parliamentary parties, visited polling stations on Election Day as observers. Armenia’s CEC had provided assistance to Artsakh’s CEC in the form of lending ballot boxes and general advisory support. New polling booth screens were also rolled out as Artsakh’s September 2019 municipal election showed that the previously-used screens could allow part of a ballot to fall through a crack in the back. Though generally satisfied, the MPs did note reports of voters taking pictures of their ballots.

The photo-taking was seen as a serious symptom of a wider problem by the two civil society organizations conducting observation missions funded by the Armenian government. Transparency International Anticorruption Center (TIAC) and the Union of Informed Citizens (UIC) NGO believed that most voters who decided to take pictures of their ballot did so in order to prove their loyalty to a campaign, infringing on their own right and duty to keep their ballot secret. The fact that reports of this type of behaviour were widespread throughout the de facto republic suggested to them that it was likely there was an organized quid-pro-quo arrangement with voters, where they might have received a “vote bribe” in return for their support. That arrangement could have been in the form of a cash payment or more subtle non-monetary assistance provided by charities.

Ahead of the election, the UIC had urged decision-makers to make it a criminal offense for a voter to photograph their own ballot but that amendment never came. Vote bribery is illegal if it can be proved but simply taking a picture of the ballot is not sufficient evidence.

TIAC published their preliminary observation report where they noted instances of party representatives standing outside a polling place urging voters to support them. It is an infraction to do so within 50 meters of the polling place. Another systemic issue was that many voters came out of the polling booth before folding their ballot. In one specific precinct (4/2) in the Martakert region, which was being livestreamed, there was a report that ineligible ballots were being stuffed into the ballot box. All disputes will be followed up through legal channels.