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The May 5 municipal elections were standard Armenian elections, from election campaign to election results, and the parties’ complaints about the election results have declarative nature, political technologist Karen Kocharyan told Panorama.am in an interview. 

Comparing the technologies and results of the Sunday’s municipal elections with those of February’s presidential elections, the political technologist said that at the municipal elections the “opposition committed a strategic mistake by using only black PR technologies, which had a negative impact on the election results.”

Commenting on the remark that during these elections the opposition forces were understanding each other and asked if it positively affected the opposition’s rating, Kocharyan said that the idea of a post-election alliance was “another soap bubble.”

“Understanding each other would only mean uniting. All the rest is a soap bubble. Whom will Prosperous Armenia unite with now, and where will it do it?” Kocharyan said.

According to the political technologist, the election results were almost predictable for him. 

“It was predictable that ARF Dashnaktsutyun would not cross the minimum threshold with the kind of campaign it ran. Armen Yeritsyan, but not Orinats Yerkir, carried out a good campaign. He showed that he can be a good manager and a good political PR person. But this is the case when even the best doctor cannot reanimate the dead,” he said.

“As for the Armenian National Congress, it felt the consequence of political analyses, including the analysis about a bourgeois-democratic revolution,” Kocharyan concluded.

Yerevan held municipal elections on May 5. According to preliminary results, only three political forces have crossed the minimum threshold. The leader is the Republican Party of Armenia with 235,512 votes (55.89%). Prosperous Armenia Party is the second with 97,189 votes (23.07%). Barev Yerevan bloc has also crossed the minimum threshold with 35,732 votes (8.48%). Armenian National Congress received 18,499 votes (4.39%), ARFD 15,999 votes (3.80 %), Orinats Yerkir Party 15,733 votes (3.73 %), Mission party 2,692 votes (0.64%).