A parliamentary election candidate of Gagik Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) was stabbed and seriously wounded on Wednesday in an attack which a senior BHK representative blamed on members of the ruling Republican Party (HHK).
The candidate, Abraham Adamian, was rushed to a hospital in Yerevan after the incident that took place in Sayat-Nova, a village in the southern Ararat province. He was undergoing surgery there late in the evening.
An Armenian police spokesman said the administration of a provincial hospital informed the police that a young man was hospitalized after sustaining stab wounds to the abdomen. He did not comment further.
A senior BHK figure, Naira Zohrabian, claimed that Adamian was stabbed by a local HHK activist and linked the incident to the upcoming parliamentary elections. “The electoral struggle has moved from the political to criminal field,” Zohrabian charged, pointing the finger at “the region’s Republicans.”
Ararat’s Republican governor, Aramayis Grigorian, seemed to deny any political reasons for the incident, saying that Adamian was stabbed by one of his relatives.
The incident occurred five days after one man was beaten up by several others in the nearby town of Masis in a bitter dispute between two HHK candidates nominated in the same constituency encompassing the area. The victim managed the election campaign of one of those candidates.
President Serzh Sarkisian called an emergency meeting of the HHK leadership at the weekend, reportedly berating the two candidates and warning others against resorting to violence during the parliamentary race.
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