The Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC) searched their homes in the town of Vagharshapat before accusing them of vote buying. The law-enforcement agency declined to immediately give any details of the accusations.
All five suspects were then set free pending investigation. The leader of their Victory alliance, Sevak Khachatrian, confirmed on Monday that three of them ran as candidates for the local council of a district comprising Vagharshapat and 17 nearby villages.
Khachatrian rejected the accusations as politically motivated, saying that Civil Contract cannot come to terms with the fact that its main local challenger garnered more than 10,000 votes.
“They are also worried that in five months, during the National Assembly elections, they will face in this community oppositionists with so many votes,” he told a news conference.
According to the official election results, Civil Contract won the weekend ballot with over 48 percent of the vote, giving it an absolute majority in the council empowered to appoint the district chief. Victory got about 32 percent, followed by another opposition group.
Civil Contract prevailed thanks to its strong showing in 16 villages that were merged with Vagharshapat into a single community earlier this year. The party led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Victory were essentially tied in the town itself. Nevertheless, Pashinian portrayed the election outcome as a vote of confidence in his government.
“Can you imagine [what would happen] if we won? I think our whole team would be in prison,” Khachatrian said, clearly alluding to the recent arrests of Vartan Ghukasian, the opposition mayor of Armenia’s second largest city of Gyumri, and over two dozen of his supporters.
Ghukasian was arrested on corruption charges seven months after four opposition groups collectively defeated Pashinian’s party in a municipal election. The mayor strongly denies the charges. Opposition leaders claim that Pashinian ordered his prosecution in a bid to overturn the results of the Gyumri election. The premier has dismissed these claims.
Pashinian had already been accused of resorting to politically motivated criminal cases and foul play to reverse Civil Contract’s defeats in local polls held in other major urban communities, including Armenia’s third largest city of Vanadzor. The leader of a local opposition bloc, Mamikon Aslanian, was arrested in December 2021 just as he was poised to again become Vanadzor mayor. Aslanian spent two and a half years in prison before being sentenced in January this year to four and a half years’ imprisonment on corruption charges denied by him.