According to official results of the September 17 elections, no political group won a majority of seats in Yerevan’s 65-seat municipal council empowered to appoint the mayor. The ruling Civil Contract party came in first with 32.5 percent of the vote that earned it 24 seats in the council.
It was trailed by a small party represented by former Mayor Hayk Marutian (19 percent) and the radical opposition bloc Mayr Hayastan (15.4 percent) that will control 14 and 12 seats respectively. The Public Voice party of blogger Vartan Ghukasian won 7 seats, giving the three opposition contenders a narrow majority in the city council and thus putting them in a position to jointly install the mayor.
However, they have failed to agree on a common mayoral candidate primarily because of various conditions set by Ghukasian. Marutian said on Thursday that even if they reached such a deal they would not have enough votes because the man topping Public Voice’s electoral list is in jail while the number two figure on the list is on the run.
The ex-mayor said he and his allies therefore decided to try to force a repeat election of the city council. Mayr Hayastan made the same decision.
Under Armenian law, such a vote will have to be held if Yerevan’s newly elected Council of Elders fails to make a quorum during its inaugural session scheduled for October 10. This will happen if all five council members representing Public Voice and remaining at large boycott the session together with Marutian’s party and Mayr Hayastan.
Ghukasian did not disclose his position on the boycott in his latest online video. Instead, he kept setting more conditions for helping Marutian regain the post of mayor. Local government jobs demanded by him for his loyalists include the post of a director of one of Yerevan’s cemeteries.
The Yerevan council will make a quorum if at least one of its members affiliated with Ghukasian’s party shows up for the October 10 session. In that case, Civil Contract’s mayoral candidate, Tigran Avinian, would need only 27 votes to become mayor. Avinian would almost certainly be backed by the pro-establishment Hanrapetutyun party that will hold the remaining 8 council seats.
A former police officer nicknamed Dog, Ghukasian emigrated to the United States about a decade ago. He has since attracted large audiences with his hard-hitting and opinionated comments on political developments in Armenia. He has been notorious for using profanities in his videos posted on YouTube.
Earlier this year, law-enforcement authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Ghukasian and arrested his associates in Armenia on charges of blackmail, extortion and fraud strongly denied by them.