Election Aftermath

Events following Armenia's presidential election might be somewhat interesting after all. Instead of rallying behind the allegedly victorious government candidate Serzh Sarkisian. After a protest of 35,000 in Yerevan, a few members of the ruling coalition defected to the Ter-Petrossian camp. Or, at least, they may have. The OSCE is also coming in for some questioning. According to Deputy Prosecutor-General Gagik Jahangirian, "the scale of fraud, violence, beatings, intimidation perpetrated in these elections was unprecedented." Meanwhile, a pre-government MP in Azerbaijan says the OSCE shouldn't monitor the elections there based on the fact that organization gave high marks to the Armenian vote. This is probably a nice way to discredit monitoring of what will be a flawed re-election of Ilham Aliyev while getting in a swipe at Armenia.