The election was widely expected to take place in late December or the first half of January following a government crackdown on a businessman whose bloc ran Armenia’s second largest city until last month.
The businessman, Samvel Balasanian, was charged in mid-October with illegally privatizing municipal land in 2014. Gyumri Mayor Vardges Samsonian his deputies and the other members of the Balasanian Bloc holding seats in the city council responded by resigning in the following days.
Civil Contract swiftly began preparations for the snap vote, unofficially designating the head of its Gyumri chapter, Karen Sarukhanian, as its mayoral candidate. However, its senior representatives indicated a possible election delay after a meeting of the party’s governing board chaired by Pashinian late on Tuesday. According to newspaper reports, Pashinian and his entourage are having doubts about their nomination of Sarukhanian and ability to win the election.
Vahagn Aleksanian, the party’s deputy chairman, claimed on Wednesday that under Armenian law, the ballot cannot be held in the absence of an elected or interim head of the local community. He said Civil Contract therefore intends to enact legal amendments that would empower the Armenian government to appoint a caretaker mayor of Gyumri.
Pashinian’s party already did that in another major city, Vanadzor, in early 2022 several months after being defeated in a local election. The opposition-linked election winner, Mamikon Aslanian, was arrested and prosecuted on corruption charges in December 2021 just as Vanadzor’s newly elected municipal council was poised to elect him as mayor.
The city is still run by the interim mayor appointed by the central government, and it is still not clear when its residents will be able to elect a new city council. Critics accuse Pashinian of having illegally overturned the results of the last Vanadzor election.
Civil Contract, which also failed to prevail in Gyumri in 2021, is now raising fears that it will try to repeat the same scenario in Gyumri. Levon Barseghian, a local civic activist, suggested that the ruling party can exploit legal loopholes and ambiguities to gain control of the municipal administration without holding a fresh election.
Leaders of two opposition parties represented in the current Gyumri council on Thursday expressed concern about such a possibility. One of them, Karen Malkhasian, said his Aprelu Yerkir party will not allow that to happen.
Civil Contract representatives insisted, meanwhile, that Pashinian’s party remains committed to the snap ballot in Gyumri. But they would not say when it could take place.