Friday, Jailed Armenian Mayor Runs For Reelection • Gayane Saribekian Armenia - Mayor Arush Arushanian visits a newly repaired sports school in Goris, June 5, 2021. The arrested mayor of an Armenian town affiliated with the main opposition Hayastan alliance is running in a local election that will be held next month. Arush Arushanian is one of the four elected local officials from Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province who demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation before being arrested in July on what they call trumped-up charges. Voters in various communities across the country will go to the polls on October 17 to elect new local councils on a party-list basis. Arushanian, 30, has run one of those communities comprising the town of Goris and several nearby villages since 2017. He still has one year left on his term in office. He will be able to technically complete it unless he is convicted by court before November 2022. In any case, under a law enacted by Pashinian’s administration last year, the next Goris mayor will be appointed by the local council, rather than elected directly by voters. Arushanian tops the list of candidates of an ad hoc opposition alliance set up for the upcoming vote. The alliance bearing his name will be challenged by Pashinian’s Civil Contract party. Civil Contract’s mayoral candidate, Vladimir Abunts, is a former customs officer who joined the ruling party several days ago. Anna Grigorian, a Syunik-born member of the Armenian parliament representing Hayastan, insisted that Arushanian is well placed to win de facto reelection despite his arrest and the fact that Civil Contract prevailed in the community in the June 20 parliamentary elections. “I think that his being in detention will actually encourage people to go to the polls and back their mayor,” Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday. “[Arushanian] stood with his fellow citizens throughout the war [with Azerbaijan,]” she said. “He was in the trenches until the last day of the war … He did everything to keep his community safe.” Armenia -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (L), Goris Mayor Arush Arushanian (C) and other officials walk through the center of the town, September 12, 2020. Syunik borders districts southwest of Nagorno-Karabakh that were retaken by Azerbaijan during and shortly after the six-week war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire last November. The mayors of virtually all provincial towns and villages blamed Pashinian for Armenia’s defeat and demanded his resignation. Some of them encouraged supporters to disrupt Pashinian’s December 2020 visit to Syunik. The prime minister faced angry protests by their backers when he finally toured Goris and other regional towns in May. Most Syunik mayors joined Hayastan in the run-up to the snap parliamentary elections. Two of them were elected to Armenia’s new parliament. They as well as Arushanian and the head of another community were arrested in July on separate charges which they and the opposition group led by former President Robert Kocharian reject as politically motivated. Arushanian was charged with vote buying. The Special Investigative Service (SIS) says that he ordered one of his subordinates to provide financial aid to villagers promising to vote for Hayastan. Arushanian maintains that the poverty benefits approved by the current Goris council were allocated on a regular basis and had nothing to do with the general elections. Christianity Vital For Freedom, Says Armenian Church Head Armenia - Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II speaks at an international conference on religious freedom in Echiadzin, September 9, 2021. Adherence to Christian faith and values is essential for properly exercising individual freedom, according to Catholicos Garegin (Karekin) II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church. “According to Christian thinking, freedom is manifested in the harmony of the human will with the will of God … Indeed, without a sublime religious understanding of the ideas of freedom and peace it is impossible to achieve an accurate understanding and realization of human freedoms and rights,” Garegin said as he hosted an international conference on religious freedom and peace on Thursday. The two-day conference held at the Echmiadzin-based Mother See of the Armenian Church brought together representatives of the main Christian denominations, including senior clergymen from the Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Anglican, Coptic and other eastern churches. The heads of the world’s leading ecumenical organizations, notably the U.S. National Council of the Churches of Christ, and international scholars also attended and addressed it. In his speech at the conference, Garegin also denounced the “abuse of religious freedom” by non-traditional religious groups branded by him as “modern-day totalitarian sects.” He accused them of causing “divisions in families and public life.” “In this regard, every effort should be made so that the ideas of religious freedom do not become an excuse for evil,” he said. The Apostolic Church, to which the vast majority of Armenians nominally belong, has long been advocating restrictive government measures against such groups that established their presence in Armenia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The ancient church enjoyed strong government support until the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Nikol Pashinian to power. The latter’s frosty relationship with Garegin has increasingly deteriorated since then. Pashinian openly attacked the church when he campaigned for the June 2021 parliamentary elections. He said “corrupt clergymen” are part of Armenia’s traditional political, intellectual and spiritual elites that “did everything” to prevent the 2018 regime change. Garegin’s office rejected the “unfair accusations.” Ruling Party Opposes Parliament Panel On Karabakh • Naira Nalbandian Armenia - A meeting of the Armenian parliament's Committee on State and Legal Affairs, Yerevan, . Lawmakers from the ruling Civil Contract party objected on Friday to an opposition proposal to legally task one of the standing committees of Armenia’s parliament with dealing with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The pro-government majority in the National Assembly already blocked last month an opposition bill calling for the creation of a separate committee on Karabakh. The main opposition Hayastan bloc went on to draft another bill that would add Karabakh-related issues to the jurisdiction of the existing parliament committee on foreign relations. The panel would be renamed the Committee on Foreign Relations and Artsakh Affairs. The parliament committee on legal affairs refused to endorse the bill. Seven of its 11 members represent the ruling party. None of them backed the Hayastan proposal. “I am sorry to note that this bill does not bring us any closer to pro-Armenian solutions,” said the committee chairman, Vladimir Vartanian. “It would not make the situation worse. It just wouldn’t change anything.” Hayastan’s Aghvan Vartanian, the main author of the bill, predicted that the pro-government majority will also ensure that the bill is not debated on the parliament floor. “This will be indicative of the ruling political majority’s attitude to the Artsakh issue,” he told reporters. Hayastan and another opposition bloc represented in the current parliament hold the government and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in particular responsible for Armenia’s defeat in last year’s war with Azerbaijan. They also accuse Pashinian of being ready to cede Armenian territory to Azerbaijan and even recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh in ongoing negotiations mediated by Russia. The premier and his political allies deny that. Pashinian’s government has also been condemned by the opposition for not sending any of its senior officials to Stepanakert last week to attend official ceremonies there that marked the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.