Friday, August 4, 2023
Opposition Signals No Plans To Join Yerevan Mayoral Race
• Tatevik Lazarian
Armenia - The Yerevan municipality building is surrounded by opposition
protesters demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's resignation, May11, 2022.
Armenia’s two leading opposition forces have given no indications yet that they
will run in municipal elections in Yerevan slated for September 17.
Residents of the Armenian capital will to go the polls to elect a new municipal
assembly that will in turn appoint the city’s mayor.
The last mayor, Hrachya Sargsian, stepped down on March 17 after only 15 months
in office. Yerevan has since been effectively run by Tigran Avinian, a deputy
mayor nominated by the ruling Civil Contract party for the vacant post. The
party raised $1.3 million for its election campaign during an event last week
attended by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
It remains unclear whether Avinian and the ruling party will be challenged by
any of the two opposition alliances represented in the Armenian parliament.
The main opposition Hayastan alliance is not known to have even discussed the
possibility of joining the mayoral. A key member of Hayastan, the Dashnaktsutyun
party, is discussing the matter separately amid apparent cracks emerging in the
alliance led by former President Robert Kocharian.
“The discussions within Dashnaktsutyun involve local structures and the Yerevan
city committee, and there will be a full statement on our participation or
nonparticipation in the next few days,” Gegham Manukian, a senior party figure,
told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday.
Pativ Unem, the other opposition bloc dominated by the former ruling Republican
Party (HHK), has held no such discussions, according to one of its senior
members, Hayk Mamijanian.
“The fact that we haven’t discussed it shows that our nation has much more
important problems and challenges to deal with,” said Mamijanian. “But the issue
will definitely be discussed. As soon as we make a decision it will be made
public.”
Avinian would also face a serious challenge from Hayk Marutian, whom Pashinian’s
political team had installed as mayor after winning the overwhelming majority of
seats in the city council in 2018. The council ousted Marutian in December 2021
after he fell out with the prime minister. The former TV comedian remains coy
about his participation in the upcoming elections.
The deadline for the submission by election contenders of necessary documents to
the Central Election Commission is August 13.
Armenian Election Chief Sees No Foul Play By Ruling Party
• Tatevik Lazarian
Armenia - Vahagn Hovakimian, chairman of the Central Election Commission, speaks
at a news conference, Yerevan, August 3, 2023.
Armenia’s top election official allied to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has
dismissed a civic group’s claims that the ruling Civil Contract party is abusing
government resources to facilitate its victory in upcoming municipal polls in
Yerevan.
In an extensive investigative report released late last month, the Union of
Informed Citizens (UIC) said that the administration of a local community
comprising the town of Spitak and surrounding villages is drawing up lists of
its Yerevan-based natives promising to vote for Civil Contract and its mayoral
candidate, Tigran Avinian, in the September 17 vote. It said the process is
overseen by Gevorg Papoyan, the ruling party’s deputy chairman.
The allegations are based on recorded phone calls between local officials and an
UIC activist posing as an aide to Papoyan. The audio of those conversations was
posted on the group’s fact-checking website.
Spitak’s deputy mayor, Hovik Hovannisian, and six village chiefs can be heard
saying that they already have or will soon have such lists. In Hovannisian’s
words, Spitak officials explain to such voters “just how bad thing will be for
them” if Civil Contract loses the polls.
Papoyan rejected the UIC report as slanderous and said he will sue the
Western-funded organization. He said at the same time that the Spitak officials
are affiliated with Pashinian’s party and have a right to campaign for its
election victory.
The UIC leader, Daniel Ioannisian, countered that the officials admitted
ordering their subordinates to participate in that campaign.
Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General last week pledged to look into the
UIC report. But it has still not opened a criminal case.
The Central Election Commission (CEC) also seems unlikely to investigate the
alleged foul play. The CEC chairman, Vahagn Hovakimian, said it could do so only
if it receives a formal complaint.
“In my personal view, that audio does not testify to an abuse of administrative
resources,” Hovakimian told reporters on Thursday. “Your or any other citizen’s
idea of abuse of administrative resources is one thing and the law another.”
A longtime collaborator of Pashinian, Hovakimian was affiliated with Civil
Contract until being controversially installed last October as head of the body
organizing all elections in Armenia. Opposition and civic groups denounced
Pashinian’s choice of the new CEC chairman.
In a joint statement issued ahead of Hovakimian’s appointment, 17 Armenian
nongovernmental organizations said that he is a partisan figure who cannot
guarantee the CEC’s “independence and political impartiality.” Hovakimian
insisted that in his new capacity he will not be influenced by his long-standing
ties with Pashinian.
Russia Against Rushing Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Deal
RUSSIA-HEALTH-VIRUS
Russia warned on Friday against attempts to “artificially” speed up the signing
of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace accord, pointing to lingering differences
between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“A hastily prepared, raw peace treaty would not bring a sustainable peace to the
region,” Denis Gonchar, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official, told the
TASS news agency. “On the contrary, it would lay the foundation for new
conflicts and tragedies in the future. Priority should be given not to speed but
to the adequate preparation of balanced and mutually acceptable solutions.”
In an interview published on the ministry’s website, Gonchar said Western powers
are trying to rush Armenian-Azerbaijani talks on the treaty even though the
conflicting sides have yet to “find solutions on a number of difficult topics.”
“From a number of Western capitals, statements are periodically made to the
effect that Baku and Yerevan will be able to sign a peace treaty already in ‘the
coming weeks and months,’” he said. “We proceed from the premise that the time
frames for the signing should be determined by the parties themselves.”
Russia - Denis Gonchar, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Fourth
Department on CIS countries.
“The task of responsible mediators is not to speed up a negotiation process for
opportunistic considerations but to facilitate reaching lasting long-term
agreements,” the diplomat added in a clear jibe at the West.
In recent months, the United States and the European Union have stepped up their
efforts to broker a settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Armenian
and Azerbaijani foreign ministers held two rounds of intensive U.S.-mediated
negotiations outside Washington in May and June. Meanwhile, the EU’s top
official, Charles Michel, hosted a series of Armenian-Azerbaijani summits in
Brussels.
The would-be peace treaty topped the agenda of those talks which fuelled
speculation that it could be signed by the end of this year. Moscow has been
very critical of the Western peace efforts, saying that their main aim is to
drive it out of the South Caucasus. U.S. and EU officials deny this.
USA - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosts the Armenian and Azerbaijani
foreign Ministers for talks at the George Shultz National Foreign Affairs
Training Center in Arlington, Virginia, June 29, 2023.
Azerbaijan is also pushing for a deal meeting its key demands. Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev declared early this year that “2023 is the last chance
for Armenia to sign the peace treaty.”
The two sides are understood to still disagree on mechanisms for delimiting the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border and providing security guarantees for Karabakh’s
ethnic Armenian population. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian complained on
Thursday that Baku is reluctant to sign the kind of agreement that would commit
it to recognizing Armenia’s existing borders.
Pashinian earlier pledged to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh
through the peace treaty, drawing strong condemnation from his domestic
political opponents. The latter also accuse him of plotting to end Armenia’s
political and military alliance with Russia and to reorient his country towards
the West.
Moscow has signaled its disapproval of Pashinian’s far-reaching concession to
Baku. In another sign of mounting tensions with Yerevan, a Russian Foreign
Ministry spokeswoman lambasted Pashinian on Wednesday for questioning the
continued presence of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh and claiming that Moscow
has scaled back its involvement in the negotiation process because of the war in
Ukraine.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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