Please direct your questions to the Prosecutor General's Office and not to the Central Electoral Commission. Central Electoral Commission (CEC) chairman Vahagn Hovakimyan on Wednesday told this to reporters at the National Assembly of Armenia, referring to the question of how he assesses the fact that on Tuesday the Prosecutor General's Office, without the consent of the CEC, brought charges against Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) chairman Gagik Tsarukyan, who is still considered an MP candidate.

Prior to that, Hovakimyan had noted that the status of an MP candidate is preserved until the distribution of parliamentary mandates.

But now, the CEC chief noted as follows, in particular: "I have seen the report, no charges were brought yesterday. The report spoke about some previous criminal case. The electoral code [of Armenia] gives immunity to MP candidates if criminal prosecution arose after obtaining the status of a [MP] candidate. If there was, for example, I don’t know an arrest before that, that’s a completely different [matter].”

When asked if the votes cast in the National Assembly (parliament) elections on June 7 could actually be counted in such a way that the PAP would enter the new parliament, the CEC chairman replied: “I cannot, I will not give such a preliminary assessment until the general process is completed, the general assessment is completed. My assessment will be in the form of a decision by the Central Electoral Commission.”

As for the accusations that when the incumbent Armenian authorities saw that they were not getting 3/5 of the votes, they reduced the PAP’s votes so that it would not enter parliament, the CEC chairman countered: “Where did it decrease? The preliminary results were publicized, the results of all 2,005 polling stations, the minutes were published, and the results of the polling stations were requested from us, we gave that opportunity; that is, everything is transparent, the whole process is video recorded. Now the recount is being carried out live again.

The PAP’s votes did not decrease, an incorrect input was made in four polling stations. The correct numbers are written in the minutes. They learned from our minutes that it was not one vote, but 77. If our minutes did not reflect that picture, they would not even have known about it. If there was an incorrect input, it will be corrected. If they had not discovered [it], we would have corrected [it] anyway."