Author: Markos Nalchajian

                                        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.