“We must send them back to their rat-ridden basements where they will wait for the justice and fairness of the people of Armenia,” he said during a weekend visit to Armenia’s second largest city.
Local residents will go to the polls on March 30 to elect a new municipal council that will in turn appoint the city’s mayor. Pashinian’s Civil Contract party faces an uphill battle to retain control of the municipal administration which it gained three months ago as a result of what its detractors see as an illegitimate power grab.
Civil Contract is challenged by a range of opposition groups mostly led by well-known local figures, including former Mayor Vartan Ghukasian, Gyumri-based parliamentarian Martun Grigorian and prominent television producer Ruben Mkhitarian.
Officially kicking off the ruling party’s election campaign, Pashinian portrayed them as corrupt individuals who are linked to former Presidents Serzh Sarkisian and Robert Kocharian and are participating in the mayoral race “for the sake of not returning what was stolen from the people.”
He pointed to asset forfeiture cases brought by Armenian law-enforcement authorities against many former government officials in accordance with a controversial law enacted by his administration. Only one of the opposition mayoral candidates in Gyumri, Ghukasian, is facing such cases in court.
Ghukasian, who ran the city from 1999 to 2012, on Monday accused Pashinian of violating his presumption of innocence and ordering courts to seize his assets.
“If he makes such a statement, it means that he is forcing the judge to make a negative decision,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “A person who has handed the whole country to the Turks is taking yet another undemocratic step against the judicial system.”
The controversial ex-mayor insisted that he is not afraid of losing 17 different properties and some 222 million drams ($560,000) in cash demanded by law-enforcement authorities from his family and will keep fighting against Pashinian’s government “till the end.”
Mkhitarian, who has a large nationwide following on social media, scoffed at Pashinian’s furious comments, saying that they only damaged the electoral chances of Civil Contract and its mayoral candidate, Sarik Minasian.
“Nikol came to town, made [Minasian’s] situation worse, and left,” the opposition candidate wrote on Facebook.
The snap election in Gyumri stems from last October’s resignations of Gyumri Mayor Vardges Samsonian, his deputies and city council members representing a local political bloc at odds with Pashinian’s government. The resignations followed criminal charges brought against the bloc’s unofficial leader, businessman Samvel Balasanian.
Pashinian mentioned those charges as well, prompting Balasanian, who now lives in the United States for ostensibly medical reasons, to break his six-month silence on Monday. In a statement, Balasanian accused the premier of distorting the essence of the “trumped-up” criminal case opened against him and his son.
“I advise the person who has crossed all human and moral boundaries to stay away from me and my family,” he said.
Balasanian also urged Gyumri residents to vote against Pashinian and his “wretched clique” on March 30.