Friday,
Jailed Armenian Mayor Runs For Reelection
• Gayane Saribekian
Armenia - Mayor Arush Arushanian visits a newly repaired sports school in Goris,
June 5, 2021.
The arrested mayor of an Armenian town affiliated with the main opposition
Hayastan alliance is running in a local election that will be held next month.
Arush Arushanian is one of the four elected local officials from Armenia’s
southeastern Syunik province who demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s
resignation before being arrested in July on what they call trumped-up charges.
Voters in various communities across the country will go to the polls on October
17 to elect new local councils on a party-list basis.
Arushanian, 30, has run one of those communities comprising the town of Goris
and several nearby villages since 2017. He still has one year left on his term
in office. He will be able to technically complete it unless he is convicted by
court before November 2022.
In any case, under a law enacted by Pashinian’s administration last year, the
next Goris mayor will be appointed by the local council, rather than elected
directly by voters.
Arushanian tops the list of candidates of an ad hoc opposition alliance set up
for the upcoming vote. The alliance bearing his name will be challenged by
Pashinian’s Civil Contract party.
Civil Contract’s mayoral candidate, Vladimir Abunts, is a former customs officer
who joined the ruling party several days ago.
Anna Grigorian, a Syunik-born member of the Armenian parliament representing
Hayastan, insisted that Arushanian is well placed to win de facto reelection
despite his arrest and the fact that Civil Contract prevailed in the community
in the June 20 parliamentary elections.
“I think that his being in detention will actually encourage people to go to the
polls and back their mayor,” Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday.
“[Arushanian] stood with his fellow citizens throughout the war [with
Azerbaijan,]” she said. “He was in the trenches until the last day of the war …
He did everything to keep his community safe.”
Armenia -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (L), Goris Mayor Arush
Arushanian (C) and other officials walk through the center of the town,
September 12, 2020.
Syunik borders districts southwest of Nagorno-Karabakh that were retaken by
Azerbaijan during and shortly after the six-week war stopped by a
Russian-brokered ceasefire last November. The mayors of virtually all provincial
towns and villages blamed Pashinian for Armenia’s defeat and demanded his
resignation.
Some of them encouraged supporters to disrupt Pashinian’s December 2020 visit to
Syunik. The prime minister faced angry protests by their backers when he finally
toured Goris and other regional towns in May.
Most Syunik mayors joined Hayastan in the run-up to the snap parliamentary
elections. Two of them were elected to Armenia’s new parliament.
They as well as Arushanian and the head of another community were arrested in
July on separate charges which they and the opposition group led by former
President Robert Kocharian reject as politically motivated.
Arushanian was charged with vote buying. The Special Investigative Service (SIS)
says that he ordered one of his subordinates to provide financial aid to
villagers promising to vote for Hayastan.
Arushanian maintains that the poverty benefits approved by the current Goris
council were allocated on a regular basis and had nothing to do with the general
elections.
Christianity Vital For Freedom, Says Armenian Church Head
Armenia - Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II speaks at an international
conference on religious freedom in Echiadzin, September 9, 2021.
Adherence to Christian faith and values is essential for properly exercising
individual freedom, according to Catholicos Garegin (Karekin) II, the supreme
head of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
“According to Christian thinking, freedom is manifested in the harmony of the
human will with the will of God … Indeed, without a sublime religious
understanding of the ideas of freedom and peace it is impossible to achieve an
accurate understanding and realization of human freedoms and rights,” Garegin
said as he hosted an international conference on religious freedom and peace on
Thursday.
The two-day conference held at the Echmiadzin-based Mother See of the Armenian
Church brought together representatives of the main Christian denominations,
including senior clergymen from the Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Anglican,
Coptic and other eastern churches. The heads of the world’s leading ecumenical
organizations, notably the U.S. National Council of the Churches of Christ, and
international scholars also attended and addressed it.
In his speech at the conference, Garegin also denounced the “abuse of religious
freedom” by non-traditional religious groups branded by him as “modern-day
totalitarian sects.” He accused them of causing “divisions in families and
public life.”
“In this regard, every effort should be made so that the ideas of religious
freedom do not become an excuse for evil,” he said.
The Apostolic Church, to which the vast majority of Armenians nominally belong,
has long been advocating restrictive government measures against such groups
that established their presence in Armenia following the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
The ancient church enjoyed strong government support until the 2018 “velvet
revolution” that brought Nikol Pashinian to power. The latter’s frosty
relationship with Garegin has increasingly deteriorated since then.
Pashinian openly attacked the church when he campaigned for the June 2021
parliamentary elections. He said “corrupt clergymen” are part of Armenia’s
traditional political, intellectual and spiritual elites that “did everything”
to prevent the 2018 regime change. Garegin’s office rejected the “unfair
accusations.”
Ruling Party Opposes Parliament Panel On Karabakh
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia - A meeting of the Armenian parliament's Committee on State and Legal
Affairs, Yerevan, .
Lawmakers from the ruling Civil Contract party objected on Friday to an
opposition proposal to legally task one of the standing committees of Armenia’s
parliament with dealing with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The pro-government majority in the National Assembly already blocked last month
an opposition bill calling for the creation of a separate committee on Karabakh.
The main opposition Hayastan bloc went on to draft another bill that would add
Karabakh-related issues to the jurisdiction of the existing parliament committee
on foreign relations. The panel would be renamed the Committee on Foreign
Relations and Artsakh Affairs.
The parliament committee on legal affairs refused to endorse the bill. Seven of
its 11 members represent the ruling party. None of them backed the Hayastan
proposal.
“I am sorry to note that this bill does not bring us any closer to pro-Armenian
solutions,” said the committee chairman, Vladimir Vartanian. “It would not make
the situation worse. It just wouldn’t change anything.”
Hayastan’s Aghvan Vartanian, the main author of the bill, predicted that the
pro-government majority will also ensure that the bill is not debated on the
parliament floor.
“This will be indicative of the ruling political majority’s attitude to the
Artsakh issue,” he told reporters.
Hayastan and another opposition bloc represented in the current parliament hold
the government and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in particular responsible for
Armenia’s defeat in last year’s war with Azerbaijan.
They also accuse Pashinian of being ready to cede Armenian territory to
Azerbaijan and even recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh in ongoing
negotiations mediated by Russia. The premier and his political allies deny that.
Pashinian’s government has also been condemned by the opposition for not sending
any of its senior officials to Stepanakert last week to attend official
ceremonies there that marked the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of the
unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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