Author: Emil Lazarian

                                        Monday, 
Armenian Opposition Buoyed By Local Election Results
        • Naira Nalbandian
Armenia - Residents of Gyumri vote in a local election, .
Representatives of Armenia’s two leading opposition groups emphasized on Monday 
the significance of the ruling Civil Contract party’s failure to win weekend 
local elections in Gyumri and two other major communities.
The party led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian had won most votes in the same 
urban communities encompassing the country’s second largest city and three towns 
in Syunik province in the general elections held as recently as in June.
Artur Khachatrian, a lawmaker representing the main opposition Hayastan bloc, 
claimed that the outcome of the local polls held there on Sunday testifies to a 
major drop in Pashinian’s approval rating.
“People’s lives are not getting better,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “On 
top of that, there is the most important thing: national security 
considerations.”
Khachatrian said at the same time that Civil Contract lost in Gyumri, Goris, 
Meghri and Agarak and nearby villages also because Pashinian did not personally 
campaign in the local races. “The ruling political force is completely dependent 
on Pashinian’s popularity,” he said.
Hayk Mamijanian of the opposition Pativ Unem bloc similarly asserted that the 
lack of negative campaigning by Pashinian this time around had a significant 
impact on the election results.
“Experience shows that when the ruling team does not spread that propaganda of 
hatred -- ‘vote for us, or else that guy will return to power’ -- they conduct 
an extremely useless and toothless election campaign because they have no 
substantive message [to voters,]” claimed Mamijanian.
He predicted similar outcomes of local elections that will be held in many more 
communities later this year.
Neither Pashinian nor his party officially reacted to the election setbacks as 
of Monday evening. But Khachatur Sukiasian, a parliament deputy representing the 
party, downplayed their implications for national politics.
Sukiasian said that many voters have different motives when casting ballots in 
national and local elections. He also suggested that Civil Contract may have 
picked wrong mayoral candidates for the latest polls.
Fugitive Armenian Statesman Dies
Armenia - Former Interior Minister Vano Siradeghian.
Vano Siradeghian, a once powerful Armenian politician and former government 
member, has died at the age of 74 more than two decades after fleeing the 
country to avoid prosecution on murder charges denied by him.
Siradeghian’s death was announced by his wife and son in a short statement 
issued at the weekend. They did not specify its cause, reveal his last place of 
residence or say whether they want to bury him in Armenia.
A former novelist, Siradeghian was one of the leaders of a popular movement for 
Armenia’s unification with Nagorno-Karabakh that erupted in 1988 and toppled the 
then Soviet republic’s last Communist government in 1990. He became one of the 
newly independent country’s most powerful men when serving as interior minister 
in the administration of its first President Levon Ter-Petrosian from 1992-1996.
Both during and after his tenure, Ter-Petrosian’s political opponents and some 
media outlets accused Siradeghian of abusing his powers to enrich himself and 
his family. He denied that.
One year after Ter-Petrosian resigned in 1998, Siradeghian was charged with 
ordering a string of contract killings. State prosecutors claimed in particular 
that he set up in the early 1990s a death squad to eliminate and terrorize 
opponents of the Ter-Petrosian administration.
In July 2000, two members of the alleged gang were sentenced to death while 
seven others got jail terms ranging from 4 to 11 years. One month later, eleven 
former officers of Armenian interior troops were given lengthy sentences after a 
Yerevan court convicted them of murdering two men in 1995.
The former interior minister strongly denied ordering those killings. He and his 
supporters insisted that the charges were fabricated as part of then President 
Robert Kocharian’s efforts to neutralize his political foes.
Siradeghian fled Armenia in April 2000 ahead of the Armenian parliament’s 
decision to allow law-enforcement authorities to arrest him pending the outcome 
of his trial. Although the authorities for years claimed to be trying to track 
him down and have him extradited, his whereabouts always remained unknown to the 
public.
Throughout his exile Siradeghian never went on record to comment on political 
developments in the country. He continued to enjoy the backing of Ter-Petrosian 
and members of the ex-president’s entourage.
In a weekend statement, Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress (HAK) party, 
paid tribute to Siradeghian, saying that as interior minister he managed to 
quickly “root out crime” and maintain “internal stability and law and order” and 
thus contributed to the Armenian victory in the 1991-1994 war in 
Nagorno-Karabakh.
The HAK also deplored the “trumped-up” charges brought against him during 
Kocharian’s rule and urged the current Armenian authorities to allow 
Siradeghian’s family to bury him at the National Pantheon in Yerevan.
Armenia’s Ruling Party Suffers Setbacks In Local Elections
        • Artak Khulian
        • Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia - Mayor Arush Arushanian visits a newly repaired sports school in Goris, 
June 5, 2021.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party failed to unseat the 
jailed opposition-linked mayor of a major community in Armenia’s Syunik province 
and was also defeated in Gyumri in local elections held on Sunday.
Voters also went to the polls in seven other communities across the country. In 
most of them, they elected, on a party-list basis, local councils that will in 
turn appoint their mayors.
The most tense and closely watched race was in the Syunik town of Goris and 
several surrounding villages making up a single administrative unit. Its 
incumbent mayor, Arush Arushanian, was arrested in July on a string of criminal 
charges rejected by him as politically motivated. Arushanian’s two deputies were 
detained in August but were subsequently set free.
Arushanian, who has headed the community since 2017, has not been convicted of 
any crimes so far and was therefore allowed to run for reelection. The 
30-year-old is affiliated with the main opposition Hayastan alliance led by 
former President Robert Kocharian. But he chose to cobble together a smaller 
bloc for the local election.
Preliminary election results showed the bloc bearing Arushanian’s name winning 
62 percent of the vote, compared with about 36 percent polled by Civil Contract. 
The ruling party’s mayoral candidate, Vladimir Abunts, effectively conceded 
defeat.
“I didn’t expect such an outcome because during the election campaign we were 
convinced that we are going to win,” Abunts told journalists late in the evening.
Armenia - Police raid the election campaign headquarters of the opposition Arush 
Arushanian Bloc in Goris, 
Sunday’s voting was marked by mutual accusations of foul play and heightened 
police presence in Goris condemned by the Arush Arushanian Bloc as a government 
attempt to intimidate its supporters.
Special police forces sent from Yerevan also raided the bloc’s campaign 
headquarters and searched it for several hours. A lawyer for the bloc said they 
suspect the incumbent mayor’s father and campaign manager, Gagik Arushanian, of 
buying votes. He rejected the allegations.
Over two dozen Arushanian loyalists, who gathered in the office after the 
closure of polls, burst with joy when Menua Hovsepian, a deputy mayor of Goris 
released from jail last week, announced the preliminary vote results.
“The people of Goris have spoken up [in favor of] dignity, Syunik and the 
country,” said Hovsepian.
The new Goris council will almost certainly reelect Arushanian as community 
head. It remains to be seen whether Armenian courts will agree to free him 
pending the outcome of his anticipated trial.
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 visits to 
Syunik.
Most Syunik mayors joined Kocharian’s bloc in the run-up to the snap 
parliamentary elections won by Civil Contract. Three of them were arrested 
shortly after the snap polls.
One of those mayors, Mkhitar Zakarian, ran another major community comprising 
the towns of Meghri and Agarak and several villages. Pashinian’s party was 
defeated there on Sunday by the Hanrapetutyun party, a pro-Western group which 
is nominally in opposition to the Armenian government but supports it on some 
issues.
Armenia -- Gyumri Mayor Samvel Balasanian speaks with journalists, April 24, 
2018.
The ruling party prevailed in two other, smaller and rural Syunik communities. 
But it suffered another serious setback in Gyumri.
Armenia’s second largest city has been run by Samvel Balasanian, a local 
businessman, for the last nine years. He was allied to the former Armenian 
government that helped him win reelection in 2016.
Although Balasanian decided not to seek another term in office, a newly created 
party bearing his name has joined the mayoral race. Its list of election 
candidates was topped by one of the outgoing mayor’s relatives, Vardges Sanosian.
The Balasanian Bloc won 36.6 percent of the vote in the weekend election marked 
by a record-lower voter turnout of just over 24 percent. Civil Contract finished 
second with about 30 percent. Three other political forces, including former 
President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party, fared much worse while managing to 
clear the 4 percent threshold for being represented in the municipal council.
It was not immediately clear if the Balasanian Bloc will seek a power-sharing 
deal with Pashinian’s party or the other opposition groups to install Gyumri’s 
next mayor.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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