The formerly opposition mayor of a rural district in northwestern Armenia confirmed on Tuesday that she is running for reelection on the ruling Civil Contract party’s ticket.
Jemma Harutiunian has run the community comprising the town of Amasia and surrounding villages since 2016. An opposition bloc led by her finished first in the last local election held in 2021. It reinstalled Harutiunian as community head with the help of former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party. She pledged allegiance to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in the following years, however.
Harutiunian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that she has applied to join Civil Contract. She said the ruling party has already decided that she will top its list of candidates in the next local election slated for November 29.
The decision has upset Samvel Gharibian, the head of Civil Contract’s Amasia chapter who challenged Harutiunian in the last local polls. Gharibian has quit Pashinian’s party and said he will run in the upcoming vote as an opposition candidate.
Several other opposition mayors also defected to the ruling party in recent years. According to media reports, most of them did so to avoid criminal charges.
Arush Arushanian, a former bitter critic of Pashinian running the southeastern town of Goris, is a case in point. After unofficially campaigning for Pashinian ahead of the June 2026 parliamentary elections, Arushanian announced last month that he will seek reelection in an alliance with Civil Contract. The announcement came shortly before Armenia’s top appeals court rejected prosecutors’ demand to imprison him for defying a 2022 court ruling.
Defiant opposition mayors have been regularly prosecuted during Pashinian rule on charges rejected by them as politically motivated. Vartan Ghukasian, the mayor of the country’s second largest city of Gyumri, was arrested in October 2025 more than six months after defeating, together with other opposition groups, Pashinian’s party in a municipal election.
In another major urban community, Vanadzor, the leader of a local opposition bloc, Mamikon Aslanian, was arrested in December 2021 just as he was poised to again become mayor following a local election. Aslanian was released from custody on bail in July 2024.