In what the Armenian opposition calls a nationwide pattern, several residents of the northern town of Stepanavan claim that they have lost their public sector jobs because of not voting for the ruling Civil Contract party or being related to opposition activists.
One of them, Ara Baghdasarian, ran the warehouse of a local cultural center until Armenia’s recent parliamentary elections. Baghdasarian says he was fired after admitting to the director of the state-run center that he voted for the opposition Strong Armenia alliance.
“I was told that the [Stepanavan] mayor said anyone who didn’t vote for the Civil Contract party should submit a resignation letter and leave,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Tuesday. “So I submitted my resignation and quit.”
The elderly man claimed to have already been fired a decade ago after rejecting a vote bribe offered by then President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party. He was reinstated following the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian to power. Baghdasarian’s personal experience led him to conclude that the current Armenian authorities are resorting to their predecessors’ practices condemned by Pashinian in the past.
Samvel Hovannisian, another Stepanavan resident and a local Strong Armenia activist, has a son who until recently served as a contract soldier at a nearby military base. He said the latter was forced to leave the armed forces because of his political activities.
“All doors have been closed to us because I am at the Strong Armenia office,” complained Hovannisian.
Manush Lalazarian gave the same reason for her and her daughter-in-law’s dismissal from a public hospital in Stepanavan where they worked as nurses. Their husbands are also affiliated with the country’s leading opposition force headed by billionaire Samvel Karapetian. Lalazarian claimed that they both were harassed by the hospital’s director in the run-up to the June 7 elections and forced to resign four days after the disputed vote.
Pashinian reacted to such claims with a series of Facebook posts. He pledged to have the alleged cases of arbitrary dismissal investigated before urging the fired public workers to stage street protests.
Later in the day Pashinian reposted a statement by the Stepanavan hospital saying that Lalazarian was fired for reporting to work late and having her daughter-in-law cover up her tardiness. The middle-aged woman, who worked as a nurse for almost 40 years, denied the accusation when contacted by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Opposition leaders as well as some media outlets in Yerevan say that politically motivated sackings have been the norm across Armenia during and after the parliamentary race. They say such cases have increased again in recent weeks ahead of local elections that will take place in various parts of the country, including Stepanavan.
In Artashat, a town 30 kilometers south of Yerevan, the main opposition mayoral candidate is Gerasim Vartanian of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun). He accused local authorities on Tuesday of trying sack his civil servant wife for political reasons.
“If you want to fire her, go ahead; it changes nothing in my life or in the lives of my family,” the Hraparak daily quoted him as telling journalists. “It only demonstrates your political bankruptcy.”
In Yerevan, closer relatives of several prominent opposition figures lost their public sector jobs in the wake of the June elections. They included the sister of Edgar Ghazarian, an outspoken oppositionist elected to the parliament on the Strong Armenia ticket. Lilit Ghazarian served as a deputy head of the Armenian government’s drug regulatory agency for 22 years.
Also pushed out was one of Armenia’s most renowned law professors, Gagik Ghazinian. He had worked at Yerevan State University (YSU) since 1983. Ghazinian’s son Davit is also an opposition lawmaker representing Strong Armenia.