An opposition bloc led by Arush Arushanian, the mayor of the town of Goris and surrounding villages, defeated the ruling Civil Contract party by a wide margin three months after his controversial arrest. Arushanian remains in detention.
The Armenian police deployed additional personnel in Goris and raided the bloc’s local headquarters during Sunday’s vote, searching it for several hours. It emerged afterwards that they suspect Arushanian’s father and campaign manager Gagik of trying to bribe local voters.
Representatives of the opposition bloc bearing the arrested mayor’s name denounced the police raid as a government attempt to influence the outcome of the closely watched election. Arushanian’s bloc won 62 percent of the vote, according to preliminary election results.
Armen Melkonian, a lawyer representing the bloc, said on Tuesday that 33 of its members and supporters were taken in for questioning in Goris on Monday. “This is real terror,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Melkonian, who was present at the interrogations, dismissed police explanations as “ridiculous.” Gagik Arushanian also categorically denied trying to buy votes.
“They want to discredit us but won’t succeed,” said the mayor’s father. “This is fresh blackmail. This is a loser’s mindset. They can’t come to terms with their defeat. There is not a single person who can come out and say that they were offered [a vote bribe.]”
Vladimir Abunts, Civil Contract’s defeated mayoral candidate in Goris, defended the police actions and denied that they are aimed at bullying local opposition forces.
Arushanian Sr. was not charged with any crime or even questioned by the police as of Tuesday evening. Nor did the police issue any statements on the crackdown.
Daniel Ioannisian, who coordinated election observers deployed in Goris and other parts of the country, said they heard claims about vote irregularities committed by both the ruling party and Arushanian’s bloc. He criticized law-enforcement authorities for not investigating allegations that a government loyalists handed out vote bribes in Tegh, a rural community not far from Goris. Civil Contract won the local election held there.
“We see in the government’s behavior a failure to properly investigate what happened in Tegh, but we see no problem with what they are doing in Goris because we have credible information that vote bribes were distributed in Goris,” said Ioannisian.
The Yerevan-based activist did not specify whether members of his monitoring team witnessed any instances of vote buying.
Arush Arushanian, in office since 2017, was one of the four heads of urban communities in Syunik who were arrested shortly after the June 20 parliamentary elections on various charges rejected by them as politically motivated. They all demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation and joined the main opposition Hayastan alliance formed by former President Robert Kocharian in the run-up to the snap polls.
Arushanian was remanded in pre-trial custody on July 16 after being charged with trying to buy votes. The Special Investigative Service (SIS) claims that he ordered the head of a village close to Goris to provide financial aid to local residents who will promise to vote for Hayastan.
The 30-year-old community chief strongly denies that, saying that the poverty benefits approved by the local council were allocated on a regular basis and had nothing to do with the general elections.