In an extensive investigative report released late last week, the Union of Informed Citizens (UIC) said that the administration of a major local community comprising the town of Spitak and surrounding villages is drawing up lists of its Yerevan-based natives promising to vote for Civil Contract and its mayoral candidate, Tigran Avinian, in the elections slated for September. It said the process is overseen by Gevorg Papoyan, the ruling party’s deputy chairman.
The accusations are based on recorded phone calls between local officials and an UIC activist posing as an aide to Papoyan. The audio of those conversations was posted on the group’s fact-checking website.
Spitak’s deputy mayor, Hovik Hovhannisian, and six village chiefs can be heard saying that they already have or will soon have such lists. Hovannisian says that he personally spoke to 30 relatives and other Spitak-born residents of Yerevan and that 23 of them assured him that they will vote for Pashinian’s party.
In his words, Spitak officials explain to such voters “just how bad thing will be for them” if Civil Contract loses the polls. They hope to earn the party 1,000 votes in this way, he says, adding that Spitak Mayor Kajayr Nikoghosian is “100 percent” involved in the effort.
Papoyan rejected the UIC report as slanderous and said he will file a defamation suit against the Western-funded organization. Speaking to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service at the weekend, the Civil Contract vice-chairman denied issuing election-related instructions to the authorities in Spitak or any other community. He said at the same time that the local officials are affiliated with Pashinian’s party and have a right to campaign for its election victory.
The UIC leader, Daniel Ioannisian, countered that the officials admitted ordering their subordinates to participate in that campaign. “If this is not a case of abuse of administrative resources, then what is?” he said.
Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General on Monday pledged to look into the UIC allegations after being asked by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service to comment on it. It is not clear why the prosecutors did not do that right after the release of the report.
Ioannisian noted that such election-related practices were widespread under Armenia’s former governments and that Pashinian for years decried them.
Pashinian and his political team claim to have eliminated electoral fraud in the country after coming to power in 2018. The prime minister regularly states that power finally “belongs to the people.”
His political opponents dispute the claim. They expressed serious concern over the freedom and fairness of future Armenian elections after Pashinian installed last October a longtime ally, Vahagn Hovakimian, as chairman of the Central Election Commission. Hovakimian was a senior member of Civil Contract until the appointment.
