With only four days to go before a local election in a major community in northern Armenia, its main opposition candidate and 13 other persons were arrested on Wednesday on charges rejected by opposition leaders in Yerevan as politically motivated.
Law-enforcement officers also raided the local offices of the opposition Strong Armenia alliance that nominated the candidate, Arsen Gevorgian, in the community comprising the town of Stepanavan and surrounding villages.
Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee claimed that Gevorgian handed out vote bribes to dozens of local residents. The detained suspects include some of those residents as well as Strong Armenia candidates running for the local council, it said in a statement.
Yerevan-based senior members of Strong Armenia were quick to condemn the arrests as a government attempt to prevent its victory in the polls. The bloc led by billionaire Samvel Karapetian likewise alleged “political motives and expediency” in a statement released later in the day.
“Changes are coming -- they are near -- despite [Prime Minister Nikol] Pashinian’s actions,” the statement said. “We urge the voters of Stepanavan not to be afraid and to participate in the voting.”
Pashinian’s ruling Civil Contract party fared relatively poorly in and around Stepanavan in parliamentary elections held in June. Strong Armenia and other major opposition groups rejected as fraudulent their official results that gave victory to Civil Contract.
Hundreds of other opposition activists, members and supporters were arrested on vote-buying charges ahead of those disputed polls and even on election day. No such charges were brought against any members of the ruling party accused by the Armenian opposition of buying votes with public money. In a report presented last month, election observers from the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) noted in this regard “perceptions of selective law enforcement” in Armenia.
The latest arrests came the day after several Stepanavan residents told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that they lost their public sector jobs in the wake of the June vote because of not voting for Civil Contract or being related to opposition activists. In a series of social media posts, Pashinian scoffed at their claims which the Armenian opposition says reflect a nationwide pattern. He cited written statements by their state employers claiming that they were fired for disciplinary, not political, reasons.