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Pakistan Observer
Feb 18 2013
Armenian president set to win election
Monday, February 18, 2013 - Yerevan - Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan
is likely to win a new five-year term on Monday after an election
campaign marred by an assassination attempt on one of his rivals and a
hunger strike by another. Opinion polls suggest Sarksyan's victory is
all but certain. He is on target to win more than 60 percent of the
votes in the small, landlocked country in the South Caucasus, with the
next of the other six candidates barely in double figures. Sarksyan's
supporters say an election free of the violence and fraud that tainted
the last presidential election in 2008, when 10 people were killed in
clashes, would show the former Soviet republic is on the road to
political stability and help sustain its economic recovery after years
of war and upheaval. `People expect from the president that he will be
able to provide security and sustainability for our country,' Prime
Minister Tigran Sarksyan told Reuters in an interview in Yerevan, the
capital of the country of 3.2 million people. `Based on that, all
social-economic problems, and first of all unemployment, can be
solved. But there are still questions about stability in a country
that is locked in a dispute with neighbouring Azerbaijan over
Nagorno-Karabakh, the tiny region over which a war was fought in the
1990s between Armenians and Azeris. Tensions over the mountainous
enclave still pose a threat to peace in a region where pipelines take
Caspian oil and natural gas to Europe. These concerns were underlined
in an attempt to kill Paruyr Hayrikyan, 63, an outsider in the
election. He was shot in the shoulder on January 31 in an incident
which for a while threatened to force the vote to be delayed for two
weeks. Another outsider in the race, Andrias Ghukasyan, has been on a
hunger strike since the start of the campaign to press demands for
Sarksyan's candidacy to be annulled and for international observers to
boycott the vote. A third candidate, Arman Melikyan, says he will not
vote on Monday because he believes the election will be slanted in the
president's favour. - Reuters
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=196451
Feb 18 2013
Armenian president set to win election
Monday, February 18, 2013 - Yerevan - Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan
is likely to win a new five-year term on Monday after an election
campaign marred by an assassination attempt on one of his rivals and a
hunger strike by another. Opinion polls suggest Sarksyan's victory is
all but certain. He is on target to win more than 60 percent of the
votes in the small, landlocked country in the South Caucasus, with the
next of the other six candidates barely in double figures. Sarksyan's
supporters say an election free of the violence and fraud that tainted
the last presidential election in 2008, when 10 people were killed in
clashes, would show the former Soviet republic is on the road to
political stability and help sustain its economic recovery after years
of war and upheaval. `People expect from the president that he will be
able to provide security and sustainability for our country,' Prime
Minister Tigran Sarksyan told Reuters in an interview in Yerevan, the
capital of the country of 3.2 million people. `Based on that, all
social-economic problems, and first of all unemployment, can be
solved. But there are still questions about stability in a country
that is locked in a dispute with neighbouring Azerbaijan over
Nagorno-Karabakh, the tiny region over which a war was fought in the
1990s between Armenians and Azeris. Tensions over the mountainous
enclave still pose a threat to peace in a region where pipelines take
Caspian oil and natural gas to Europe. These concerns were underlined
in an attempt to kill Paruyr Hayrikyan, 63, an outsider in the
election. He was shot in the shoulder on January 31 in an incident
which for a while threatened to force the vote to be delayed for two
weeks. Another outsider in the race, Andrias Ghukasyan, has been on a
hunger strike since the start of the campaign to press demands for
Sarksyan's candidacy to be annulled and for international observers to
boycott the vote. A third candidate, Arman Melikyan, says he will not
vote on Monday because he believes the election will be slanted in the
president's favour. - Reuters
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=196451