Thirteen parties and one bloc were vying for 65 seats in the city council that will elect the new mayor of the Armenian capital. They included the Civil Contract party of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. Its mayoral candidate, Tigran Avinian, has effectively run Yerevan since March.
Avinian’s chances were boosted by the decisions of the opposition Hayastan and Pativ Unem alliances represented in the Armenian parliament not to join the mayoral race. Some of their senior members have said that the Yerevan elections are not significant given the grave security challenges facing Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Andranik Tevanian, a Hayastan parliamentarian, disagreed with the de facto boycott, resigning from the National Assembly and setting up his own bloc to run for mayor. His main message to voters during the election campaign was that opposition victory in Yerevan would pave the way for regime change in the country. Hayastan, which is headed by former President Robert Kocharian, eventually decided to endorse Tevanian and his bloc.
Civil Contract and Avinian faced an apparently more serious challenge from Hayk Marutian, a popular TV comedian whom Pashinian’s political team had installed as mayor after winning the last municipal polls in September 2018. The city council ousted Marutian in December 2021 after he fell out with the prime minister.
Marutian was the main target of the ruling party’s verbal attacks during the election campaign. For his part, the ex-mayor renewed his accusations that Pashinian and his entourage betrayed the goals of the “velvet revolution” that brought them to power in May 2018.
Another major opposition contender is the Aprelu Yerkir party linked to Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian-born tycoon and philanthropist who moved to Nagorno-Karabakh last year. Its mayoral candidate, Mane Tandilian, too has described the Yerevan polls as an opportunity to precipitate Pashinian’s ouster.
The generally calm campaign was marred by independent observers’ repeated claims that Pashinian’s party is illegally using its government levers to facilitate its victory. The two main local groups monitoring the vote specifically accused it of forcing schoolteachers, medical personnel and local government employees to attend Avinian’s rallies. Both Pashinian and Avinian strongly denied that.