YEREVAN, June 9. /TASS/. The elections to the Armenian parliament were held under unprecedented government pressure on the opposition and open interference of the collective West in the internal affairs of the state, Eduard Sharmazanov, former deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament and a member of the Republican Party of former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, said in an interview with TASS.

He said that even during its April 4 congress, the Republican Party of Armenia signaled the beginning of rigging of the parliamentary polls. According to him, even then there was an unprecedented pressure on the opposition and external support from the collective West for the current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. "Even then, the main opposition candidate Samvel Karapetyan was under house arrest, and criminal cases were initiated against other opposition candidates. There was an unprecedented spread of hate speech, an unprecedented use of administrative resources by the authorities. I am not even talking about the external assistance to this regime unseen in the history of Armenia. We saw the arrival of European leaders who expressed their open support for Pashinyan. No one has rebuked French President Emmanuel Macron, who intervened in our internal affairs. The same was done during the visit of US Vice President JD Vance, later of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Later the statement of US President Donald Trump," the politician said.

Sharmazanov added that the EU sent financial support to Armenia under the fictitious ploy of hybrid warfare. According to him, the Armenian authorities used a massive administrative resource during the campaign. "All Armenian social networks were flooded with footage of the use of the state apparatus in the election campaign of the authorities, including the use of children in it. I'm not even talking about the unprecedented number of criminal cases, detentions and arrests of people with opposing views. How did it happen that all the detainees were representatives of the opposition forces, and not a single violation was recorded by Pashinyan's party?" said Sharmazanov.

Political pressure

The politician is convinced that the political pressure of the authorities on the opponents, accompanied by sowing fear, had a serious impact on the election results. "And we have seen this not only during the elections. For eight years now, Armenia has been living under conditions of political repression," he said, adding that it was not normal that Pashinyan's main opponent Karapetyan was under house arrest and could not campaign.

He said that the collective West will continue to sow discord in Armenian-Russian relations. "The collective West needs Armenia as an anti-Russian springboard. They don't hide it and act openly. I have been a parliament member for 12 years, including eight as deputy speaker of parliament. If our government had used at least 0.1% of those electoral violations, administrative resources, and sowing fear, the West would have blown us to smithereens. But today they are silent because they benefit from everything that is happening in our country," Sharmazanov said.

He reiterated that the authorities had committed various violations with the open intervention of the Western coalition. "The elections seemed to have taken place in the time of [Francisco] Franco and [Augusto] Pinochet," he concluded.