Pashinyan Touts Local Election Sweep

Former President Robert Kocharyan’s Hayastan alliance, the second opposition force represented in the Armenian parliament, did not participate in the local elections at all. One of its key components, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) party, separately fielded candidates in four communities. Dashnaktsutyun polled between 10 and 15 percent of the vote there. Its leader, Ishkhan Saghatelyan, praised this performance.

Other senior members of the bloc led by Karapetyan’s billionaire uncle Samvel Karapetyan said the election result was greatly influenced by the pre-election arrests of over two dozen Strong Armenia activists and supporters, including its mayoral candidate. They are prosecuted on vote-buying charged rejected by the local as politically motivated.

Several other election candidates were detained in other communities ahead of the elections held there. Strong Armenia, Hayastan and other opposition groups claimed that the arrests are part of a broader government campaign of intimidation and obstruction of the opposition.

In the run-up to the polls, they accused the Armenian authorities of bullying many of their local activists and other potential candidates. Dozens of them dropped out of the races.

Meanwhile, Pashinyan touted the local election sweep as another milestone in the “destruction” of his political foes.

“In a word: the [foreign] spy forces – that three-headed or four-headed party of war – must be destroyed,” he said. “And the results of the local self-government elections show that this has taken place with the help and support of the citizens of Armenia.”