Nagorno-Karabakh parliamentary election, 2005

The 2005 Nagorno-Karabakh parliamentary elections were held in the internationally unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh Republic on 19 June 2005. The election saw the two pro-government parties, the Democratic Party of Artsakh and Free Motherland, win a large majority of seats. The opposition criticised the conduct of the election but international election monitors generally praised the election.

Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence from Azerbaijan in 1991. A conflict took place between 1988 and 1994 which resulted in Nagorno-Karabakh, with Armenian support, becoming de facto independent from Azerbaijan. However it has not been internationally recognised and Azerbaijan still claims the area as part of its state. The President of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2005, Arkadi Ghukasyan, was elected in 1997 and re-elected in 2002 and had 2 years remaining on his presidential term.

2005 would be the fourth parliamentary election in Nagorno-Karabakh and was the first under a new electoral law which, among other things, introduced transparent ballot boxes. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation had been in co-operation with the government until the party's only member of the government, Armen Sargsian, was sacked as Education minister in December 2004. The party then went into opposition. The opposition was expected to do well in the upcoming parliamentary elections after the leader of the opposition Movement 88 party, Eduard Aghabekian, was elected mayor of Stepanakert in August 2004 defeating a government backed candidate.

185 candidates from 7 parties, together with some independents, stood in the parliamentary elections. They were competing for 33 seats in the National Assembly, with two-thirds of the seats elected directly and a further third elected on a proportional basis. There was a requirement for turnout to exceed 25% in order for the election to be valid and the elected members would serve a five-year term.

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