The chief of the municipal administration’s staff, Davit Hakobian, said on Tuesday that they ignored his warnings to show “political restraint” and comply with an Armenian law on local government.
“They took part in [opposition] rallies … including during working hours,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Also during working hours, they posted calls, insults directed at the country’s leader.”
One of the fired officials, Artur Ghazarian, rejected the “ludicrous” explanation, saying that he never skipped work to attend the anti-Pashinian protests mostly held in Yerevan.
“As for what I do and how I behave after work, it’s my personal business,” he said.
Ghazarian, who has worked in the Vanadzor mayor’s office for 20 years, also said that he and his colleague will challenge their dismissal in court. He claimed that it was ordered by the government of Lori province, of which Vanadzor is the administrative center. Hakobian denied the claim.
Lori’s governor, Aram Khachatrian, also heads the regional branch of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party.
Following last June’s snap parliamentary elections Khachatrian controversially demanded the resignation of elected heads of Lori’s rural communities supporting opposition forces. He was also accused of pressuring other pro-opposition local officials and public sector employees to resign.
One such official, who ran a Vanadzor policlinic, was sacked shortly after a municipal election held in December. He ran as a candidate of an opposition bloc led by Mamikon Aslanian, the city’s former mayor.
The bloc effectively won the election with 39 percent of the vote, compared with just 25 percent garnered by the ruling party. Aslanian was thus well-placed to regain his post lost in October. But ten days after the election, he was arrested on corruption charges rejected by him as politically motivated.
Later in December, Armenia’s Administrative Court blocked the first session of Vanadzor’s new municipal council empowered to elect the mayor. The Lori capital still has no chief executive.
Ghazarian, the fired official, admitted that he too campaigned for the ex-mayor.
