Ahead of the local elections in Armenia on 25 October, the Investigative Committee reported the arrest of 14 individuals from the town of Stepanavan, including the Strong Armenia candidate for the head of the community, Arsen Gevorgyan, on charges of giving, assisting in, and receiving electoral bribes for the opposition Strong Armenia party.
This year, Armenia is holding municipal elections in some local communities. Several communities voted on 27 September, with the next two scheduled for 25 October and 13 December. In most of the communities, the parliamentary opposition does not have any candidates. Civil society has warned that opposition members are facing repression in the local elections. At the same time, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan urged citizens to report these alleged incidents and began publishing letters from officials to prove that people had been fired from local state institutions in those communities for reasons other than their political views.
Arrests and firings before elections
The Investigative Committee statement published on Wednesday says that Strong Armenia candidates in Stepanavan and persons acting on behalf of the party gave electoral bribes to several dozen voters from different settlements in the same community, on the condition of participating in the elections and voting for the aforementioned party during the elections. Stepanavan is one of the few communities where Strong Armenia fielded a candidate. The elections here are set for 25 October.
‘In addition, the preliminary investigation revealed that the same candidate, with the assistance of the council candidate, prepared to give electoral bribes to more than three dozen voters by separating the amounts intended for each voter, making notes, and compiling lists, on the condition of voting for the aforementioned party’, reads the Investigative Committee statement accompanied by a hidden video recording.
Strong Armenia MP Anshanik Gevorgyan wrote that, from early morning, law enforcement had been carrying out searches and arresting supporters of the Strong Armenia party in Stepanavan.
‘The actions of the authorities are extremely predictable, but what is happening is already beyond the bounds of reason: yesterday’s demonstration of “democracy” and today’s blatant illegalities are vivid proof of this’, he wrote.
Pashinyan’s response to repression claims
Civil society reported that opposition candidates are facing repression in the local elections.
‘It is obvious that many Civil Contract members want to participate in the elections in the absence of competition […] And for that, they do not hesitate to use administrative levers’, wrote Daniel Ionnisyan, Programmes Director at the Union of Informed Citizens.
Without addressing any individual criticism, Pashinyan talked about the alleged repressions on Tuesday.
‘I call on all voters of the Republic of Armenia to go to the elections and vote against candidates and political forces that use administrative leverage, threats, excessive pressure, threats of dismissal or promises of employment, distribute and/or promise electoral bribes. If any Civil Contract candidate behaves in this way, I call on you to vote against that Civil Contract candidate. In parallel, please contact me or law enforcement agencies about all such cases. Long live democracy’, he wrote on Facebook.
In the following post, he urged citizens to organise protests if their electoral rights were violated.
Pashinyan then posted a series of official letters from a hospital, a nursery in Stepanavan, and a municipality in Masis, that explain why they fired a particular employee. The documents list formal and technical reasons for dismissal, detailing the ways in which the employees did not perform their work well. The number of posts from Pashinyan about this in a single day appears to be an attempt to contradict criticism that the firings are politically motivated. The Masis elections are set for 13 December.
In one decision shared by Pashinyan, Norayr Hakobyan, the head of the Masis community, said that he had fired the administrative head of Azatashen, Sargis Stepanyan, because he had been absent from the municipality for two days, during which time another local administrative official had used his official stamp. Stepanyan also notified Hakobyan that he would be standing in the municipal elections with another political party, after which Hakobyan decided to fire him. Azatashen village is part of the larger Masis community.