Ruling party’s electoral proposal contested by opposition alliance

The ruling Civil Contract party has proposed amendments to Armenia’s electoral rules that would prohibit including personal names in the titles of political alliances.

The bill, introduced in parliament on Tuesday, is widely viewed as targeting Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan and his political force, which is expected to be a leading opposition contender in the parliamentary election scheduled for June.

The opposition alliance, announced last week as ‘Strong Armenia with Samvel Karapetyan’ and comprising three parties, has condemned the move as politically motivated and staged a demonstration outside parliament today. Its legal representative said that, if adopted, the amendments would contradict recommendations of the Venice Commission, an advisory body of the Council of Europe of which Armenia is a member. It advises against introducing fundamental changes to electoral legislation less than a year before an election.

The proposed changes come one week before the registration window for parties and alliances opens. While the Venice Commission’s guidance is advisory and uses non-binding language, opposition figures argue the timing and scope effectively single them out, as no other electoral participant would be affected. A lawmaker from the ruling party who introduced the bill has argued the amendment does not constitute a fundamental change.

Vardine Grigoryan, an electoral processes expert and coordinator of the initiative known as Independent Observer, told CivilNet the proposal should be seen as correcting a legal inconsistency rather than a political move. She noted that similar provisions exist in Armenia’s law on political parties and were present in the electoral code prior to 2024.

"Additionally, proportional representation should be ideological, not person-centered,” Grigoryan explained in a comment for CivilNet. She added that international practice generally discourages the use of personal names in alliance titles.

Armenia will hold parliamentary elections on June 7, with all seats allocated through a proportional party-list system. The winning coalition will then select the prime minister. The electoral threshold is set at 4% for individual parties and 8% for alliances, and the law requires at least three political forces to be represented in parliament.