They include former Mayor Hayk Marutian, whose party finished second in last September’s municipal election, and four councilors representing the radical opposition Mayr Hayastan alliance.
Civil Contract and its local coalition partner, the Hanrapetutyun party, want to strip them of their seats on the grounds that they have skipped most of the council votes. The city council will meet to discuss the initiative on Monday.
Isabella Abgarian, a Marutian ally, dismissed the absenteeism claims, saying that the opposition councilors simply boycotted council sessions and votes for tactical reasons. She said boycott is a legitimate tool of political struggle.
“The ruling party itself has used this tool, twice failing to attend a council session so that it doesn’t take place,” Abgarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s political team, she said, is simply trying to silence Marutian, who has stepped up his criticism of the municipal administration lately.
“We regard this as an act of political terror by the authorities,” Andranik Tevanian, the Mayr Hayastan leader, charged for his part.
Tevanian said that the authorities are seeking to punish “active members” of his bloc in a bid to discourage others from challenging Mayor Tigran Avinian, who is a senior member of Civil Contract. “They will fail to achieve that,” he said.
Civil Contract declined to respond to the opposition claims.
Pashinian’s party fell well short of a majority in the city council as a result of the September polls. Together with Hanrapetutyun, it controls only 32 of the 65 council seats. Marutian’s National Progress party and Mayr Hayastan hold 26 seats between them.
The remaining 7 seats are controlled by the Public Voice party that was until recently led by a controversial video blogger based in the United States. Although the small party campaigned on an opposition platform, it decisively helped Civil Contract install Avinian as mayor. It now also holds the key to the removal of the five opposition councilors which has to be backed by the council majority.
Incidentally, Public Voice’s nominal chairman, Artak Galstian, has not attended any council session because of being held in pre-trial detention on charges of blackmail and extortion. The authorities have made no attempts to strip Galstian of his council seat.