Armenia's Sarksyan wins presidential vote-results, opposition stages protests

Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sarksyan won a presidential election, results showed on Wednesday, but opposition parties prepared protests in the capital after complaining that the contest was rigged.

 

Sarksyan, who has vowed to continue the policies of incumbent Robert Kocharyan, had an unassailable lead with 782,233 votes -- or 56 percent -- of the 1,408,712 ballots counted, a spokeswoman for the Central Election Committee said.

 

The result looked set to give Sarksyan outright victory and let him avoid a runoff with his closest rival, opposition leader and former President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who had 310,792, or 22 percent, of votes counted, as calculated by Reuters.

 

The results were from 85 percent of the ballots counted. The commission's spokeswoman did not give percentages for candidates and said the body would wait until all ballots had been counted before doing so.