Leaders of the political parties that failed to make it to the Yerevan City Council have given only negative assessments of the election process in the capital’s vote on Sunday.

According to the preliminary data published by the Central Election Commission, four political parties: Orinats Yerkir (Country of Law), Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutyun (ARF), the Labor Socialist Party of Armenia (LSPA) and the People’s Party (PP) have not cleared the required 7 percent election barrier.

Meanwhile, the ruling Republican Party of Armenia swept the elections. Its junior coalition partner, Prosperous Armenia, and the opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC) came distant second and third.

Out of the 412,264 participating voters, 20,959 gave their votes to Orinats Yerkir, 18,648 voted for Dashnaktsutyun, 8,569 for People’s Party, and 1,951 people gave their votes to LSPA.

The People’s Party leader Tigran Karapetyan compared these elections to buying and selling and markets, where all the votes where purchased.

“I am not satisfied with these elections. I think the overwhelming majority was given money, I compare the elections with buying and selling. What happened yesterday was market from top to bottom, where coalition parties were buying votes,” Karapetyan told ArmeniaNow.

Movses Shahverdyan, leader of LSPA, with the least number of votes, defines the Yerevan City Council elections as unfair, dishonest and lacking quality, as he says ‘the way they really were’.

“At the polling station I went to vote – school #145 – our proxies counted 20 votes by the second half of the day, whereas by the end-of-the-day calculations we were given only 10 votes,” says Shahverdyan.

“That’s not the issue, however, the issue is the phenomenon itself. It’s not about us being upset because we did not pass [became a member of the City Council] and others did, but because the elections were held in such a way – elections mustn’t be held that way, as it might bring our statehood to an end,” he added.

Orinats Yerkir has not made a public statement yet.

Fifth-placed Dashnaktsutyun, which withdrew from the governing coalition in late April after being represented in power for nearly a decade, reported through a spokesman that the party was “in sitting” as of Monday early afternoon and that they hadn’t prepared their statement yet.

The ANC (which embraces 18 opposition parties), despite clearing the 9 percent hurdle foreseen for election blocs with percent barrier with 69,871 votes (or 17.4 percent), also describes the Sunday elections as marked by “disgraceful” violations, intimidation and held in an atmosphere of violence.

“Last night the authorities once again displayed their criminal essence. The criminal world, led by Samvel Alexanyan, even beat and kidnapped reporters, proxies, observers at Malatia [Malatia-Sebastia community],” ANC coordinator Levon Zurabyan claimed at a press conference held shortly after polls closed on Sunday evening.

Preliminary results of the elections show that the Republican Party is the top finisher with 190,171 votes (47.3 percent), followed by Prosperous Armenia (91,141 votes, or 22.7 percent).