Parliamentary Elections 2015: Nagorno-Karabakh to elect its sixth National Assembly in May

Parliamentary Elections 2015: Nagorno-Karabakh to elect its sixth National Assembly in May –

Armenianow – The Central Electoral Commission of Nagorno Karabakh during ten days will be accepting applications from candidates, political parties and party alliances willing to participate in the National Assembly elections scheduled for May 3. 

On Saturday the opposition National Rebirth party also declared about its intention to participate in the elections. According to party representatives, their participation will make the 6th Parliamentary elections in Nagorno-Karabakh more competitive.

More specifically, the two-year-old party in Artsakh with 560 members intends to nominate candidates in all majoritarian electoral districts, thus increasing the number of political parties participating in once-in-five years Parliamentary elections till four.

Earlier three political forces represented in the current Parliament – the Free Homeland party, the Democratic Party of Artsakh and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Dashnaktsutyun also stated about their plans to vie for seats in the new legislature.

According to the changes made in the NK Electoral Code last October, henceforth 22 of 33 NA MPs in Karabakh will be elected by the proportional system of representation (party lists) and 11 – by the majoritarian system (single-mandate constituencies).

Also, the majoritarian representative at the NK NA, the Free Homeland party held the 5th conference on Saturday during which the Prime Minister of the country, Arayik Harutyunyan was re-elected for the post of the party chairman. Harutyunyan said that their party “as the NK’s leading political force, is approaching Parliamentary elections with all due responsibility.”

It is noteworthy that elections to be held in NK are already qualified as “aggression” in Azerbaijan. Ali Hasanov, an adviser to President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, said that their country will accordingly react to every “unilateral move, political and social event” planned and held in NK.

Samvel Babayan, former Commander-in-Chief of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army who lived in Moscow during recent years, also appears to be interested in the upcoming parliamentary elections in Karabakh. According to National Rebirth party head Hayk Khanumyan, he plans to support them and will soon visit Artsakh.