Background
Levon Ter-Petrosyan was the President of Armenia from October 16, 1991 to February 3, 1998. He was forced to step down in February 1998 on allegations of defeatism in connection to the ongoing negotiations with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. He was succeeded by his then Prime Minister Robert Kocharyan who opposed Ter-Petrosyan's concessions to Azerbaijan. Kocharyan was re-elected for a second term as president on March 5, 2003 amid allegations of electoral fraud. In early 2004 there were demonstrations by opposition-led protestors and calls for Kocharyan's resignation. Kocharyan completed his second term as president on February 2008 and under the Armenian constitution was not eligible for a third term. Kocharyan's Prime Minister Serge Sargsyan had Kocharyan's backing for his candidacy as the next president. Ter-Petrosyan was also a candidate for this election, having announced his candidacy during a speech in Yerevan on October 26, 2007, in which he accused Kocharyan's government of massive corruption involving the theft of "at least three to four billion dollars" over the previous five years. The election was held on February 19, 2008 and Sargsyan won the election with 53% of the vote, according to official results, with Ter-Petrosyan in second place with 22% of the vote. Under Armenia's electoral law, if neither candidate wins at least 50% of the votes, the top two contenders have to face each other in a second round of the elections. International observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, PACE and the European Parliament had said that "the presidential election in Armenia mostly satisfied the international standards".
Read more about this topic: 2008 Armenian Presidential Election Protests
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