News - Vardan Ghukasyan: Yerevan elections' 2nd round should not be held when 100,000 refugees have poured into Armenia

A second round of the elections for the Yerevan Council of Elders cannot be allowed in this situation when the Azerbaijani army is standing near Yeraskh village of Armenia, when 100 thousand refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh have poured into Armenia, and every penny is important. Vardan Ghukasyan, head of the opposition Public Voice party, announced this, responding to the statement by the former mayor of Yerevan, Hayk Marutyan. "To let a second round, to do [election] campaign [again] door to door, I neither accept it, nor do I do it. There is such a danger, the biggest danger; the Rob-Serzh [i.e. former Armenian Presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan] clan shall not strengthen its positions. As the opposition, I prefer that these are not strengthened than that [the ruling party’s Yerevan mayoral candidate Tigran] Avinyan is not reproduced. If Avinyan is reproduced, the law enables to express no-confidence and remove [him from office] after a year. But when the Rob-Serzh clan is strengthened, it will be the complete end of the Republic of Armenia; it will become a region [of Russia] without Syunik [Province]. I went to an unacceptable deal for me, but Hayk Marutyan said that either he will be the mayor or there won't be a mayor [at all], and I replied: ‘You won't be the mayor.’ Now I am not concerned about the mayoral elections, I am interested in what will happen until the 10th of the month," Vardan Ghukasyan said. To note, Hayk Marutyan, the former mayor of Yerevan and the mayoral candidate from the National Progress Party, announced that they will boycott the first session of the new Yerevan Council of Elders in order to hold new elections of the Council, and proposed the Public Voice Party to also boycott the aforesaid session in order to prevent the reproduction of the incumbent authorities. According to the results of the Yerevan Council of Elders’ elections held on September 17, the Public Voice Party received seven seats in the council. None of the political forces that ran in the elections and passed the electoral threshold, however, has 33 seats which are needed to elect the mayor of Yerevan.