Friday,
Opposition Candidates Arrested For ‘Vote Buying’
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia -- The main entrance to the Office of the Prosecutor-General.
Two election candidates representing opposition groups led by former President
Serzh Sarkisian and businessman Gagik Tsarukian have been arrested for allegedly
distributing vote bribes.
One of them, Ruben Khlghatian, is a former mayor of the town of Armavir. He is
16th on the electoral list of the opposition Pativ Unem bloc co-headed by
Sarkisian and former National Security Service Director Artur Vanetsian.
According to law-enforcement authorities, Khlghatian was arrested in the nearby
village of Janfida late on Thursday while giving a local resident 9 million
drams ($17,300) in cash which the Armenian police said was due to be used for
vote buying.
The Office of the Prosecutor-General said on Friday that the two men tried to
discard the money when police officers entered the villager’s house. A police
video showed stacks of 20,000-dram notes lying on the ground.
A spokesman for the prosecutors said they have asked Armenia’s Central Election
Commission to allow investigators to indict Khlghatian.
The former mayor, who had run Armavir for 14 years, denied the accusations as
politically motivated through his lawyer, Gayane Papoyan.
“The criminal case has nothing to do with jurisprudence,” Papoyan told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service.
A senior Pativ Unem representative, Armen Ashotian, likewise described
Khlghatian’s arrest as an “act of political vendetta” ordered by Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian. He claimed that Pashinian is worried about Pativ Unem’s rising
popularity ahead of the June 20 parliamentary elections.
Janfida residents interviewed by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service said that nobody has
offered to pay them for voting for the opposition bloc.
“Nobody has made such an offer to me,” said one man. “There have been no such
things in the village,” insisted another.
Meanwhile, the Central Election Commission allowed the authorities to press
charges against the other arrested suspect, Aramayis Aproyan. The latter is a
resident of the town of Gavar running for the parliament on the ticket of
Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK).
The Special Investigative Service claimed that Aproyan and another local BHK
activist have handed out food parcels worth 7,000 drams ($13.5) each to Gavar
residents pledging to vote for the opposition party.
It was not clear if the suspects will plead guilty to the accusations. The BHK
did not issue statements on Aproyan’s arrest.
Under Armenian law, both giving and accepting vote bribes are criminal offenses
punishable by up to seven years in prison.
Pashinian Seeks ‘Steel Mandate’ To Stay In Power
• Karine Simonian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and his political allies campaign in
Armavir, June 7, 2021.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Friday urged voters to give him and his party
a mandate to continue to rule Armenia with a more firm hand.
Campaigning in his native Tavush province, Pashinian again said that the
upcoming general elections must end the “velvet revolution” that brought him to
power in 2018 and mark the beginning of a “steel revolution” involving tougher
methods of governance.
“What does the steel revolution mean?” he said during a campaign rally. “It
means strengthening institutions of law enforcement, it means a dictatorship of
the law, and we will go down that path with your mandate.”
Pashinian similarly asked Armenians last week to not just reelect him and his
Civil Contract party but also “replace the velvet mandate with a steel mandate”
so that his administration can get tougher on the country’s former leaders and
their loyalists challenging his rule.
The prime minister has repeatedly complained that he has been too tolerant of
them since the 2018 regime change despite what he regularly describes as their
corrupt practices and other abuses committed while in power.
Former Presidents Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian lead two of the main
opposition groups running in the snap elections slated for June 20. They both
have been facing what they see as politically motivated corruption charges in
separate trials that appear to have stalled in recent months.
Dozens of other former government officials have also been charged with
corruption during Pashinian’s rule. But virtually none of them is known to have
been convicted by court.
Kocharian and especially Sarkisian have harshly criticized Pashinian during the
ongoing parliamentary race, prompting furious reactions from the latter.
Pashinian pledged on Tuesday to “purge” the state bureaucracy and wage
“political vendettas” against local government officials supporting the Armenian
opposition if he wins the elections. Opposition representatives dismissed those
statements, saying that they exposed his fears of losing power.
Pashinian again attacked the country’s former rulers during his campaign trip to
Tavush.
Opposition Party Sees No Landslide Winner In Armenian Elections
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia - Bright Armenia Party leader Edmon Marukian speaks with journalists,
Yerevan, .
Edmon Marukian, the leader of the opposition Bright Armenia Party (LHK),
predicted on Friday that none of the political forces participating in the June
20 elections will win a majority of votes.
Marukian insisted that this outcome would prevent post-election unrest and bode
well for the formation of a “government of national unity” by all the forces to
be represented in Armenia’s next parliament. Such a government should be headed
by a politically neutral prime minister, he said.
“We have made clear that we will not join any single force and help it come [to
power] and destroy other forces,” Marukian told journalists while campaigning in
Yerevan together with his associates. “We don’t have such an agenda. Either we
all will join the forces to get the country out of this situation or … there
will be a second round of voting.”
Under Armenian law, a runoff vote between the two top election contenders must
be held if no party or bloc polls more than 50 percent of the vote or if up to
three groups gaining control of at least 54 percent of the parliament seats
between them fail to reach a power-sharing agreement.
In a clear reference to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party
and radical opposition blocs challenging it, Marukian claimed that a landslide
election winner would spark allegations of fraud street protests by rival groups.
The LHK is one of the two opposition parties represented in the outgoing
Armenian parliament. Some observers believe that it will struggle to clear the 5
percent vote threshold for being represented in the National Assembly this time
around.
During the ongoing election campaign, Marukian’s party is positioning itself as
an alternative to both the current government and the blocs led by former
Presidents Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian.
Marukian deplored on Friday bitter recriminations and insults traded by
Pashinian and the two ex-presidents in recent days. “How can the country’s
incumbent and former leaders use such rhetoric?” he said.
“The more they insult each other the timelier our agenda becomes … The situation
this country is in right now is such that hating each other and making plans to
destroy each other is a luxury,” added the LHK leader.
Unlike Civil Contract and Kocharian’s Hayastan bloc, the LHK has avoided holding
campaign rallies so far. Instead, Marukian and his allies have spent the first
five days of the campaign walking around Yerevan and other cities, handing out
booklets to passersby and appealing to voters in residential neighborhoods.
Kocharian Promises Security, Economic Recovery
• Gayane Saribekian
Armenia - The opposition Hayastan bloc led by former President Robert Kocharian
(C) holds a campaign rally in Abovian,
Former President Robert Kocharian pledged on Friday to restore security and
stability in Armenia, kick-start the domestic economy and deepen the country’s
ties with Russia if an opposition alliance led by him wins the June 20 elections.
Kocharian and senior members of the Hayastan alliance toured central Kotayk
province on the fifth day of official campaigning for the snap elections in
which they will be one of the ruling Civil Contract party’s main challengers.
“We are coming to restore security,” Kocharian said at a campaign rally held in
the town of Abovian. “We are coming to strengthen our borders. We are coming to
restore and deepen relations with allied states.”
“We are coming to ensure an economic upswing. We are coming to fight against
unemployment, emigration and poverty,” he said, adding that a new Armenian
government led by him would attract large-scale investments and help to create
“tens of thousands of new jobs each year.”
Kocharian has repeatedly touted his economic track record on the campaign trail,
arguing that the Armenian economy grew at double digit rates during much of his
1998-2008 rule. He has also said that he would use his personal relations with
Russian leaders and President Vladimir Putin in particular to boost Armenia’s
national security seriously weakened by last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Russian Sputnik news agency reported earlier this week that Putin and
Kocharian again spoke by phone when the latter visited Moscow late last month. A
spokesman for the ex-president confirmed the “lengthy phone call,” saying that
the two men discussed Russian-Armenian relations and the security situation in
the region.
Russia has criticized criminal proceedings that were launched against Kocharian
shortly after Armenia’s 2018 “velvet revolution.” Putin has repeatedly made a
point of congratulating him on his birthday anniversaries and praising his
legacy.
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian shakes hands with supporters during
an election campaign rally in Yerevan's Nor Nork district, June 9, 2021.
Kocharian campaigned in the Kotayk towns of Yeghvard and Nor Hachn earlier on
Friday, holding indoor meetings with local residents. Some of them were able to
ask him questions.
One voter wondered if Kocharian’s possible return to power would restore
impunity which was enjoyed by government-linked and wealthy individuals under
Armenia’s former rulers.
The 66-year-old ex-president acknowledged that various abuses committed by them
were widespread and said he “will not allow such practices” if he succeeds in
unseating Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
He also said: “Have you ever heard about by any act of impudence by a member of
my family or my other relatives? If my loved ones don’t do that, who else would
do that?”
Kocharian went on to stress in this regard that he is not responsible for the
policies of his successor and erstwhile ally Serzh Sarkisian, who was toppled in
the 2018 uprising.
“After 2008 I had no ties to the authorities,” he said. “From 2009 through 2018
I didn’t even have contacts [with the Sarkisian administration] because there
were many things with which I disagreed.”
Sarkisian now leads another opposition alliance running in the elections.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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