As a result of the additional National Assembly election yesterday, mayor of Gyumri Samvel Balasanyan’s seat was won by Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) member Arman Sahakyan. The owner of Shirak Football Club defeated his rival Murad Grigoryan, the coordinator of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) in Gyumri, by 10 100-vote margin. The RPA member won 13 337 votes, and the member of the Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANM) won 3 237 votes, according to the preliminary results. Although the
election was valid, very low turnout clearly shows that either the people are extremely disappointed, or election bribes were not handed out, therefore many people didn’t deem it necessary to go to polling stations on Sunday.
According to the data made public by the Central Election Commission (CEC), only 17 421 out of 55 971 voters registered for the election in no. 35 electoral district consisting of a part of Gyumri and all villages of Akhuryan turned out to vote. And 824 ballots were found invalid. www.aravot.am inquired of Hamlet Mosinyan, a native of Lori residing in Gyumri, today why the population had been so passive, in his opinion. “As far as I know, they took a good care of villages; they paid the land tax to a certain extent, and what benefits were there in Gyumri? If we take into account that there is a part in our people that will not do anything without a favor, we shouldn’t be so surprised at the passiveness of the residents of Gyumri. Besides, residents of Gyumri want to show by this that they have no trust in the National Assembly, I mean the residents of Gyumri don’t care whether the National Assembly exists or not at all; they are not fascinated by the laws they adopt and don’t respect the appointed MPs.
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“However, the fact of the matter is that I noticed a very sad thing during this election – there is no opposition in our country, there are people who play an opposition. If we had really had an opposition, the forces that have declared themselves an opposition would have at least endorsed opposition candidate Murad Grigoryan. However, we saw everyone washing their hands and standing idly by,” the journalist expressed concern.
Nune AREVSHATYAN
