Voters there went to the polls to elect a new local council empowered to appoint the city’s mayor. The vote was viewed by analysts as an important test of Pashinian’s popularity.
Armenia’s Central Election Commission said on Monday morning that with nearly all ballots cast counted, Civil Contract won 36.8 percent of the vote and thus fell short of an absolute majority in the council. Its likely ally, the pro-Western Eurovote bloc, failed to clear the 6 percent vote threshold for holding seats there.
The Armenian Community Party and its mayoral candidate, Vartan Ghukasian, finished second with almost 20.7 percent of the vote, followed by the Our City bloc of Martun Grigorian, an opposition member of the Armenian parliament, which got about 15.9 percent. Two other opposition groups led by prominent TV producer Ruben Mkhitarian and businessman Karen Simonian will also be represented in the new city council, having polled 7.9 percent and 6.2 percent respectively.
The four opposition contenders were thus projected to gain at least 18 of the 33 council seats, putting them in a position to install a common candidate as Gyumri mayor. Ghukasian, who had run the city from 1999 to 2012, said during the tense election campaign that he should be chosen as mayor if he gets more votes than the other opposition forces.
Mkhitarian’s and Simonian’s blocs were quick to pledge to back the ex-mayor’s candidacy without seeking any power-sharing deals with him. Grigorian, who has had an uneasy relationship Ghukasian, made no statement to that effect as of Monday morning.
Speaking shortly after midnight, a senior member of Civil Contract, Vahe Ghalumian, acknowledged that the ruling party will not control the new city council. He insisted that the party’s electoral performance “cannot be considered a defeat.”
“Civil Contract came in first and got nearly twice as many votes as the runner-up,” Ghalumian told journalists.
Pashinian’s party suffered an outright defeat on Sunday in another local election held in a major community just west of Yerevan. A local bloc led by the opposition Aprelu Yerkir party won more than 56 percent of the vote in the community comprising nine villages.
Opposition representatives and election observers critical of the Armenian government reported various irregularities throughout Sunday’s voting in Gyumri. But they did not allege the kind of systematic fraud that could have seriously affected the outcome of the tightly contested ballot.
Grigorian held a news conference on Sunday afternoon to condemn law-enforcement authorities for detaining more activists of his opposition bloc, including an elderly woman. Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee said that they are suspected of committing an election-related “crime.” It did not elaborate.
Eight other opposition activists, including Grigorian’s father and son, were arrested on Thursday. They all were freed after being charged with giving or promising vote bribes or engaging in election-related benevolence which is also not allowed by Armenian law. Grigorian and other local opposition figures rejected the accusations as politically motivated.
Pashinian’s party also failed to win the previous local election held in 2021. It gained control of Gyumri’s municipal administration late last year following criminal charges brought against the unofficial leader of a local bloc that ran the city.