Parliamentary Speaker calls those who bribe voters ‘monkeys’

Armenian Parliamentary Speaker Alen Simonyan has claimed that those distributing vote-bribes should be afraid, adding, in a reference to Savmel Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia Alliance, that the opposition would ‘very strongly’ lose.

He claimed it was ‘nonsense’ that before coming to power, Civil Contract were ‘fighting to ensure that the authorities did not distribute money; now we are fighting to ensure that the opposition does not distribute money’.

Simonyan said that a legislative initiative had already been put into circulation, under which the punishment for vote-buying would be increased from seven to eight years in prison to up to 10 years.

In reference to those handing over the bribes, Simonyan called them ‘monkeys’.

‘They’re monkeys. We’ll keep those monkeys in cages meant for monkeys. We’ll go to the cages right after the elections, and they’ll end up in prison’, Simonyan said.

Separately, Simonyan expressed confidence that Pashinyan would be Civil Contract’s candidate for Prime Minister in the next parliamentary elections scheduled for 2031.