By Lucy Papachristou
YEREVAN, June 8 (Reuters) - Armenia's ruling Civil Contract party won just under half of the votes in a parliamentary election seen as a test of its handling of a peace deal with Azerbaijan and its growing pivot to the West, away from traditional patron Russia.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's party won 49.8% of votes with all polling stations counted, results from the Central Election Commission (CEC) showed on Monday, down from 54% in the 2021 election.
The results also showed a better-than-expected tally for three main pro-Russian opposition groups, which won a combined 37% of votes and are, preliminarily, on track to enter parliament alongside Civil Contract.
Sunday's vote was Armenia's first general election since a crushing military defeat by Azerbaijan in 2023, after years of conflict and political turbulence.
In a press conference in the early hours of Monday morning, Pashinyan said his party had prevailed, calling it a "historic victory".
"The Armenian people voted for regional prosperity and cooperation and I hope this will draw a positive response from Turkey and Azerbaijan," he said, pledging to continue building ties with both the West and Russia.
However, the results paint a mixed picture for Pashinyan, who fell short of securing the two-thirds majority in parliament necessary to call the constitutional referendum demanded as part of a peace deal by Azerbaijan, which has been at war with Armenia intermittently since the late 1980s, and to normalise relations with Turkey, a key ally of Azerbaijan.
The final distribution of parliamentary seats is not yet clear.
OPPOSITION GROUPS CALL FOUL
Some of Armenia's opposition groups criticised the outcome and Pashinyan's victory announcement, which he made when results from just over one-fifth of the country's 2,005 polling sites showed his party with around 54% of the vote.
The premier's main rival Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian billionaire who founded Strong Armenia last year and also campaigned on a pro-business platform, accused the government of rigging the vote.
"Rest assured the elections are not over yet and there are no results. They (the authorities) will not get the victory they desire," Russia's Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
The Armenia Alliance said Pashinyan's declaration was premature and constituted "pressure on the CEC and usurpation of power," according to Interfax.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which monitored the election, will hold a press conference at 1100 GMT.
Three opposition groups passed the necessary threshold to get into parliament: the Strong Armenia alliance with 23.2%, the Armenia Alliance with 9.9%, and the Prosperous Armenia party with 4%.
Turnout in the landlocked country of 3 million was strong at nearly 59% of eligible voters.
(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Edmund Klamann/Guy Faulconbridge, Kirsten Donovan)
