Three Armenians elected to Georgian parliament

Three Armenians won seats in the Georgian parliament after the Sunday run-off that followed the October 8 election.

All the three, Henzel Mkoyan (elected from a single-seat constituency of Akhalkalaki), Ruslan Poghosyan (re-elected from Tbilisi) and Samvel Manukyan, are members of the Georgian Dream party which, according to preliminary results, has secured 115 mandates, winning a majority of votes in 48 out of the 50 constituencies.

Among the winners, there are also four Azerbaijanis, of whom one, Azer Suleymanov, was re-elected from the opposition United National Movement. He is known to be the strongest anti-Armenian representative of Georgia’s parliament.

According to the Georgian Constitution, only a political force or a coalition with 113 mandates can form a cabinet. In the first round, the United National Movement crossed the 50% threshold in most of the polling stations.  

The Georgian parliament has 150 members, of whom 77 are elected from single-seat constituencies and 73 – through proportional representation voting.