By Alexander Pracht
Gyumri, Armenia’s second-largest city, and Parakar, a community near Yerevan, held local elections on Sunday. In Gyumri, the ruling Civil Contract party’s candidate Sarik Minasyan secured first place but failed to win the majority needed to appoint a mayor. Meanwhile, in Parakar, the party was defeated by the opposition Unity Alliance.
With a voter turnout of 42.7%, acting interim mayor Minasyan secured 36.8% of the vote. He was followed by Vardan Ghukasyan, who served as Gyumri’s mayor from 1999 to 2012 as a member of the formerly ruling Republican Party. In Sunday’s election, however, he ran under the banner of the Communist Party and attracted 20.7% of the votes. This result marked an improvement for Civil Contract, which was runner-up in the 2021 election.
Two opposition alliances, My Powerful Community and Mother Armenia, collectively received 14.1% of the vote and have already announced their willingness to form a coalition with Ghukasyan. However, as of now, their combined votes are not enough to outnumber Minasyan’s bloc, unless they are joined by Martun Grigoryan whose Our City Alliance won 15.8% of the vote.
In total, five political groups passed the threshold and will be represented in the city’s Council of Elders. Among those that failed to enter the council are the European Alliance, which advocates for Armenia’s integration with the European Union, and the Country for Living party, associated with businessman, philanthropist and former Artsakh cabinet leader Ruben Vardanyan, who is currently imprisoned in Baku.
Ghukasyan, a key Gyumri official during the administrations of Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, faced criticism during his pre-election campaign for employing rhetoric associated with criminal subcultures. Last month, he was arrested on suspicion of illegally carrying firearms but was later released, claiming the move was an attempt to pressure him ahead of the elections. Before the vote, Ghukasyan called on all opposition forces to unite in a coalition. “If you do otherwise, it will mean you have an arrangement with the ruling party,” he told opposition groups.
Sarik Minasyan was elected caretaker mayor of Gyumri in December. He previously served as a member of the National Assembly, representing the liberal Bright Armenia party, which was once allied with Civil Contract but later became part of the opposition and is now a non-parliamentary force.
Back in December, Minasyan defeated six other candidates to win the interim mayor position, including Karen Sarukhanyan, the head of Civil Contract’s Gyumri branch and a sitting member of parliament. Sarukhanyan was initially the party’s sole nominee for caretaker mayor but fell out of favor after a drug scandal involving his relative, which raised concerns about the potential impact on the party’s reputation.
Gyumri has been without a mayor since October, when opposition-aligned Vardges Samsonyan resigned following allegations against key figures of his Balasanyan Bloc. Among them was former mayor Samvel Balasanyan, who led the city from 2012 to 2022 and is now wanted on suspicion of economic crimes.
In the Armavir region’s Parakar, Volodya Grigoryan of the opposition Unity Alliance won the election with 56.6% of the vote. The ruling Civil Contract party was the runner-up. The community’s former leader, Ludwig Gulnazaryan of Civil Contract, resigned in November after reportedly being involved in a deadly shooting, though he was not suspected of murder. In Sunday’s election, he managed to gather 31.5% of the vote.
During the voting procedure, the Armenian police sent six reports to investigative bodies regarding possible violations, with 14 other incidents under review. The country’s Ombudsman’s office recorded instances of improper voter guidance, the presence of unauthorized individuals at polling stations, crowding, violations of voting secrecy, and the absence of visible voter lists, among other issues.
Civil Contract’s leader, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, congratulated all political forces and candidates who passed the threshold in the elections. He also stressed that any reports of unlawful influence on the will of the voters must be thoroughly investigated. “The priority goal is to prevent their recurrence in the future,” he said.
Armenia will hold nationwide parliamentary elections no later than next summer. The Gyumri election is considered an important test for the Civil Contract party, which currently enjoys a majority in parliament, having won roughly 54% of the popular vote in the national election in June 2021.
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