By Mark Dovich
Yerevan mayor Hayk Marutyan was ousted at a city council vote Wednesday and replaced by councillor Hrachya Sargsyan. The move set off a political firestorm in Armenia, where many view the ouster of the popular mayor as politically motivated.
Sargsyan is seen as a close ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who has yet to officially comment on the move to depose Marutyan.
The 44-10 no confidence vote was organized by representatives of My Step alliance, who enjoy a majority in the chamber and support Pashinyan’s government. A simple majority of 33 city councillors was required to remove Marutyan from power.
Before the vote, the My Step councillors accused Marutyan of failing to “fulfill the most important mission of eliminating systemic corruption from the Yerevan municipality.”
Still, Marutyan remains generally popular among Yerevan residents for his handling of a waste management crisis in 2019 and for his reform and development efforts.
The My Step alliance is dominated by the Civil Contract party, which alone controls the majority of seats in the National Assembly, Armenia’s one-chamber legislature.
It is a startling turn of events for Marutyan, who was once seen as one of Pashinyan’s closest political allies. Marutyan actively participated in the 2018 Velvet Revolution, which toppled the Republican Party government and catapulted Pashinyan to power.
Later that year, Marutyan scored a landslide victory in Yerevan city elections, presaging Pashinyan’s sweep of the National Assembly less than three months later.
But last December, Marutyan began distancing himself from Pashinyan, who led Armenia to
a disastrous defeat to Azerbaijan in last year’s war in and around Karabakh. Rumors of a growing rift between the two politicians have swirled in Armenian media since.
In the run up to June’s parliamentary elections, Marutyan pointedly declined to support Pashinyan’s reelection campaign.
At Wednesday’s city council meeting, Marutyan accused Pashinyan’s government of having “deviated from the revolution’s values” and criticized the authorities for alleged corruption.
A number of allegations of corrupt practices by various members of Pashinyan’s government have emerged in recent months, perhaps most notably involving Alen Simonyan, the parliament speaker and a close Pashinyan ally.
“Why did the speaker of parliament buy a car for himself worth $200,000, when the poverty level in the country is at 30%,” Marutyan asked council members Wednesday, referring to a November announcement by the Armenian government that it would purchase a luxury vehicle for Simonyan’s official use.
That announcement caused an uproar in Armenian political circles and on Armenian social networking sites.
Marutyan’s ousting comes amid an apparent government crackdown on local-level dissent and against the backdrop of stunning losses for the ruling Civil Contract party in a wave of municipal elections held earlier this year.
Those polls saw Civil Contract lose control of several major cities, including Gyumri and Vanadzor, Armenia’s second and third largest cities, respectively.
Earlier this month in Vanadzor, an electoral bloc led by Mamikon Aslanyan, who has headed the city since 2016, won the plurality of votes, with Civil Contract coming in second.
But in a striking development, Aslanyan was arrested last Wednesday, one day before he was due to take office, on charges of abuse of power and fraud. Aslanyan and his allies have rejected the charges as politically motivated.
Just days before, Aram Harutyunyan, a local politician in the town of Vardenis, was arrested, prompting city residents to blockade a major regional road. Harutyunyan’s electoral bloc, United Vardenis, is considered close to the Armenia Alliance, an opposition party led by former President Robert Kocharyan.
It is a pattern that has repeated itself throughout the country in recent months, with a number of opposition-allied mayors and community leaders finding themselves arrested on what they allege are trumped-up charges.
They include Arush Arushanyan, Lusine Avetyan, Suren Ohanjanyan, Manvel Paramazyan, and Mkhitar Zakaryan, all of whom lead communities in Armenia’s southernmost Syunik region, which has emerged as a bastion of opposition to Pashinyan following last year’s war.
Arushanyan, Paramazyan, Zakaryan and other local Syunik leaders had issued statements demanding Pashinyan’s resignation after Armenia’s military defeat to Azerbaijan.
Syunik has been particularly impacted by the outcome of last year’s war, as it borders broad swaths of territory, previously under Armenian control, that Azerbaijan captured in the course of fierce fighting.
In a Facebook post last week, Aren Manukyan, a project manager at Armenia’s Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center, wrote that “the government is taking clear and big steps back from democracy, which is especially evident in the local self-government elections.”
Arman Tatoyan, Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, has also been critical of the apparent crackdown on local-level dissent, saying last week that the arrests are “being done under the guise of so-called criminal and political proceedings” and are “fundamentally at odds with democratic norms.”
