Monday, November 1, 2021 Azeri-Controlled Road ‘Safe For Armenians’ November 01, 2021 • Naira Nalbandian An Azerbaijani checkpoint set up at on the main road conneting Armeia to Iran, September 14, 2021. Armenians can safely use an Azerbaijani-controlled section of the main highway that connects Armenia to Iran, a senior security official in Yerevan insisted on Monday. The 21-kilometer section is part of contested border areas along Armenia’s Syunik province which were controversially handed over to Azerbaijan following last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijani forces set up a checkpoint there on September 12 to tax Iranian commercial trucks transporting cargo to and from Armenia. The move caused serious disruptions in Armenian-Iranian trade operations and raised tensions in Baku’s relations with Tehran. Officials in Syunik accused Azerbaijani officers of bullying some Armenian drivers and their passengers at the same section of the road that also connects the Syunik towns of Goris and Kapan. Later in September, Russian and Armenian border guards reportedly began escorting Armenian vehicles driving through it. “It is safe,” said Aram Hakobian, a deputy head of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS). “I was there yesterday, it’s very safe.” “True, representatives of the neighboring state [Azerbaijan] are standing there but they don’t stop Armenian citizens,” he told reporters. Commenting on incidents that are still periodically reported from the Goris-Kapan highway, Hakobian said: “I have no such information.” The Azerbaijani roadblock left the Armenian government scrambling to speed up the reconstruction of an alternative Syunik highway bypassing the border area. The government has assured senior Iranian officials that it will be essentially completed by the end of November. Armenians Ignore COVID-19 Mask Rule November 01, 2021 • Marine Khachatrian Armenia - Passengers on a commuter bus in Yerevan, March 12, 2021. Few Armenians wore masks outdoors on Monday despite being legally required to do so following a surge in coronavirus cases that have killed more than 1,000 people in the country of about 3 million over the past month. The Armenian government decided to impose the rule, effective from October 1, in a bid to contain the latest wave of infections. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said the measure will make it easier for authorities to enforce mask wearing on public transport and inside shops and other enclosed areas. An RFE/RL correspondent saw very few people with face coverings in the center and outskirts of Yerevan. Residents of other parts of Armenia have been even more reluctant to put on masks throughout the pandemic. There were also no police officers in sight fining people or warning them to comply with the new legal requirement. Critics questioned the effectiveness of the requirement in the absence of strict enforcement of physical distancing rules in public areas. Armenian bars, restaurants and other leisure and cultural facilities have operated with few sanitary restrictions since the summer of 2020. Nor have the authorities banned or restricted mass events in recent months. Armenia - An official from the Food Safety Inspectorate inspects a grocery store in Yerevan, September 3, 2021. Davit Melik-Nubarian, a public health expert, said the government should shorten the work hours of leisure venues and consider introducing a mandatory coronavirus health pass for entry to them if it is to slow the spread of COVID-19. The Armenian Ministry of Health registered 55 more coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, raising the official death toll from the disease to 6,379. The figure does not include almost 1,300 other infected people who the ministry says have died as a result of other, chronic conditions. Pashinian made clear last Thursday that the government has no plans to impose lockdown restrictions. It will instead step up its vaccination campaign and push for greater mask wearing, he said. Nearly seven months after the launch of the campaign, less than 10 percent of Armenia’s population has been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the lowest immunization rate in wider Europe. Armenia - A crowded cafe downtown Yerevan, May 14, 2020. Vaccinations have accelerated over the past month after the authorities began requiring all public and private sector employees to get inoculated or take coronavirus tests twice a month at their own expense. But there are growing complaints about poor and unsafe organization of the process mainly carried inside state-run policlinics across the country. Gohar Abrahamian, a Yerevan resident, feared contracting the coronavirus when she stood in long waiting lines to get vaccinated late last week. Abrahamian said she first waited at the entrance to a policlinic together with about 40 other people, some of whom had possible COVID-19 symptoms and wanted to see a doctor. Once inside the building, she had to join an even longer line of citizens crammed into a narrow corridor and waiting outside a single vaccination room. “I kept looking around to see who is sneezing and who is not,” the woman told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Social distancing was out of the question in those circumstances.” New Gyumri Mayor Elected After Deal With Ruling Party November 01, 2021 • Satenik Kaghzvantsian Armenia - Vardges Samsonian attends a public discussion in Gyumri, October 15, 2019. A leader of the political force that won the October 17 municipal election in Gyumri became the mayor of Armenia’s second largest city on Monday after striking a power-sharing deal with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party. Gyumri has been run by Samvel Balasanian, a local businessman, for the last nine years. Although Balasanian decided not to seek another term in office, a newly created bloc bearing his name joined the mayoral race. The Balasanian Bloc garnered 36.6 percent of the vote, earning it 14 seats in the 33-member city council empowered to elect the mayor. In a serious setback for Pashinian, the ruling Civil Contract party finished second with 11 seats. The remaining eight seats were distributed among three opposition parties. The new council elected Balasanian Bloc’s mayoral candidate, Vardges Samsonian, by 24 votes to 8. Samsonian, who previously headed a municipal agency providing utility services, pledged to strive to turn Gyumri into a “well-maintained, green, tranquil, consolidated, clean and developing city looking to its future with confidence.” Armenia - The Mayor's Office in Gyumri. He was backed by council members representing his bloc and Pashinian’s party in line with a “memorandum of cooperation” signed by the two political forces on Saturday. A senior Civil Contract member who signed the deal said they agreed to share “responsibility for governing the city” and pursue a “coordinated staffing policy.” The deal entitles Civil Contract to naming Gyumri’s deputy mayors, she said. It was signed two days after two senior municipal officials affiliated with the Balasanian Bloc were arrested by Armenia’s National Security Service on corruption charges. The bloc did not publicly allege political reasons behind the arrests. Some Armenian outlets reported earlier in October that the Balasanian Bloc is facing strong pressure from the central government to reach a power-sharing deal with Pashinian’s party and even cede the post of mayor to it. Senior party figures denied such pressure. Civil Contract’s list of candidates in the Gyumri election was topped by Hovannes Harutiunian, the governor of surrounding Shirak province. Harutiunian is now widely expected to be sacked and replaced by a pro-government member of the Armenian parliament, Nazeli Baghdasarian. The latter will be the fourth provincial governor handpicked by Pashinian in the last three and a half years. Armenia -- A street in the center of Gyumri, August 25, 2019. The Balasanian Bloc would have still managed to install Samsonian as mayor had it accepted a coalition proposal from the opposition Zartonk (Awakening) party that controls four seats in the new Gyumri council. A representative of the bloc, Sona Arakelian, said it chose to team up with the ruling party instead because “the people of Gyumri gave the largest number of votes to these two forces.” Less than one-quarter of the city’s eligible voters went to the polls on October 17. Samsonian also defended his bloc’s political choice criticized by opposition groups. “By gaining an absolute majority [in the council] we will manage to jointly address Gyumri’s problems even more rapidly,” the newly elected mayor told reporters. “If we were not united, there would be a problem.” 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.