The country’s Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC) said the crackdown is part of a criminal investigation into allegations that some election contenders are trying to buy votes with cash, humanitarian aid or even infrastructure upgrades. The law-enforcement agency released the audio of wiretapped phone conversations meant to substantiate the allegations.
Local and Yerevan-based opposition leaders condemned the crackdown as a desperate effort to prevent the ruling Civil Contract party’s defeat in the upcoming election regarded by analysts as a key test of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s flagging popularity.
Voters in Gyumri will go to the polls on Sunday to elect a new municipal council that will in turn appoint the city’s mayor. Pashinian’s 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. Criticism of the Armenian government has been a key element of their election campaigns.
The campaign headquarters of the opposition Mayr Hayastan (Morther Armenia) bloc was the first to be searched by investigators in the morning. One of its activists, Emma Grigorian, was detained at her home and taken to Yerevan for questioning.
“I got no answers to my questions about why they came and what they are looking for,” Mayr Hayastan’s mayoral candidate, Karen Simonian, said after the search that lasted for several hours.
Simonian denied any vote buying attempts and condemned the crackdown, saying that it is aimed at disrupting his bloc’s concluding campaign rally scheduled for Thursday evening. The rally will go ahead as planned, he told reporters.
The other opposition group targeted by the law-enforcement authorities is the Our City bloc of Martun Grigorian, a Gyumri-based member of the Armenian parliament. Investigators searched its campaign offices and Grigorian’s house before arresting the latter’s father and son, who is also an election candidate.
Those actions followed a complaint lodged by a Yerevan-based election monitoring group. It complained to prosecutors that Grigorian had some of the city’s battered streets covered with crushed stone to make them more passable.
The opposition candidate denied that this amounted to election-related benevolence not allowed by Armenian law. He said he only wanted to show Gyumri residents that Pashinian’s government “has done little for you.”
Grigorian also insisted that he is undaunted by the arrests of his son and father. He said that the arrests will only deal a further blow to the ruling party’s reputation.
“This is just a gift to us oppositionists,” he told reporters after the search conducted in his home.
The two other major opposition candidates, former Gyumri Mayor Vartan Ghukasian and prominent television producer Ruben Mkhitarian, also condemned the searches and arrests as politically motivated.
Davit Arushanian, the governor of the surrounding Shirak province coordinating the ruling party’s local election campaign, insisted that the authorities have not unleashed any “repressions” against their challengers. He said that Civil Contract is the country’s “most democratic and legitimate” political force.
Pashinian compared the key opposition contenders to “rats” when he kicked off his party’s election campaign in Gyumri earlier this month.
