Security chief: Today’s parliamentary elections to be ‘unprecedented’

The National Security Service Director Artur Vanetsyan has voted for ‘a free and independent Armenia where it’s an Armenian citizen who decides who will be in power’, he told reports after casting his ballot in the snap parliamentary elections at Yerevan’s 4/35 polling station.

He stressed the parliamentary voting will be ‘the fairest and unprecedented’ in the history of Armenia.

“The operative situation is under control across Armenia; no incidents have taken place so far,” he said. “All the polling stations opened at the same time, only one or two cases of power outage was recorded at polling stations, but the issues were resolved quickly. Everything proceeds smoothly at the moment. I am confident the whole course of election will pass in the same manner.”

The NSS chief said they have received no reports on vote buying. “All the operative services are working, and, believe me, we will immediately respond to vote buying cases, if there are any,” he added.

2010 polling stations opened across Armenia at 8am Sunday as the country is holding early parliamentary elections. The polls will close at 8pm.

Eleven political forces, including nine parties and two blocs, are running for parliament. According to official data, 2,573,779 people are eligible to vote at the snap elections.