The pro-government majority in the council ousted Grigor Yeritsian and two other councilors in September 2024 on the grounds that they skipped most sessions of the local legislature or its standing committees. They dismissed the official explanation, saying that their absence was part of legitimate political boycotts and accusing the authorities of stifling dissent.
Yeritsian challenged his ouster in court. A judge of a Yerevan court of first instance declared it null and void earlier this week.
“The Central Election Commission must now meet and reinstate me,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday.
Mayor Tigran Avinian’s office made clear, however, that it will appeal against the court ruling. It said the ruling will come into force only if it is upheld by a higher court. A lawyer for Yeritsian said in this regard that he will ask the Court of Appeals to issue an injunction reinstating his client pending its decision on the appeal.
Yeritsian is a senior member of former Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutian’s party that finished second in the last municipal elections held in September 2023. Marutian and two other council members representing a more radical opposition group were likewise stripped of their council seats in February 2024 for the same declared reasons.
Civil Contract, which is led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, fell well short of a majority in the city council in the 2023 polls. Together with the pro-government Hanrapetutyun party, it won only 32 of the 65 council seats. The ruling party managed to install Avinian as mayor with the decisive help of another, obscure party that claimed to be in opposition to Pashinian during the election campaign.