“Sit Back and Drink Relaxing Tea” – Naira Zohrabyan to Romanos Petrosyan

Kotayk regional governor Romanos Petrosyan is grossly violating the law by interfering in the mayoral elections in Abovyan. This was stated by NA “Prosperous Armenia” faction MP Naira Zohrabyan in an interview with NEWS.am, referring to today’s incident involving the regional governor's participation in Abovyan.

It should be noted that the governor, who is on vacation, is visiting polling stations, monitoring the election process. At one of the polling stations, he discovered a paper containing citizens' names and phone numbers in the hands of a commission member from the Prosperous Armenia party and approached the police. Observers at that polling station expressed dissatisfaction with the governor's actions and recorded it.

“I will say with the well-known phrase that has become a cliché: sit back in your place and let the citizens of Abovyan make their choice. The governor is grossly violating the law, and all his explanations that he is on vacation and so on do not give him the right to approach the polling station. Moreover, he has no right to get involved in a dispute with trusted persons or commission members. I understand the governor's confused state, but I repeat: sit back in your place and allow free and fair elections to take place. Just as none of us, no Prosperous Armenia MP has allowed themselves to interfere in the process, no official has the right to use administrative resources and roam polling stations thinking that he has so much authority that his presence can change the atmosphere,” said the MP.

Naira Zohrabyan also mentioned that the governor is using administrative resources and advised him to relax and drink relaxing tea.

It should be noted that five candidates have been nominated for the mayoral elections in Abovyan. The leading candidates are the incumbent mayor Vahagn Gevorgyan and Grigor Gulyan, nominated by the Civil Contract party. Other candidates include Sasun Grigoryan, Arthur Ghazaryan, and Manuk Mkrtchyan.

There are 27 polling stations in Abovyan. The number of voters is 44,600. As of 14:00, 10,258 out of 44,519 eligible voters in the Abovyan community have participated in the election, which is 23.04%.