The National Assembly (NA) of Armenia on Tuesday passed the bill on amendments to the Electoral Code in the first reading, with 66 votes in favor, 16 against, and 0 abstentions.

Only the ruling majority Civil Contract (CC) faction MP’s voted in favor of the bill.

NA speaker Alen Simonyan announced that a 3-hour recess, after which they will return and vote on the second reading of this bill.

Earlier, the CC faction had to take a 20-minute recess twice, since there were not enough CC lawmakers in the NA Sessions’ Hall to pass the bill.

As reported earlier, according to the proposed amendment, "The name of the bloc of parties cannot contain personal names, names of state and local self-government bodies or similar names and (or) their variations to the point of confusing them."

Observers note that this initiative is clearly directed against businessman and philanthropist Samvel Karapetyan, the owner of the Tashir Group of companies, whose name and surname are on the name of the electoral bloc created by his Strong Armenia party.