The Acting Governor of Armavir Organized an Urgent Meeting for Regional School Principals

According to "168.am", the entire administrative resource was mobilized in the Armavir region during Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's campaign on June 7, particularly the educational institutions in the region. Employees who contacted our editorial office reported that the direct order to school principals came from Sonia Budaghyan, the head of the Armavir regional government’s Department of Education, Culture, and Sports, who was also working at that time and receiving a salary at the expense of taxpayers to implement state policy in the field of education.

She toured the villages, participated in Nikol Pashinyan's campaign during working hours, and potentially conducted a headcount, all likely to enforce a previously made threat. We also published a photo taken on the day of Nikol Pashinyan’s campaign in Armavir. From left to right, the photo shows Sonia Budaghyan, the head of the Department of Education, Culture, and Sports of the Armavir regional government, alongside the principal of the Dast village school, Siranush Sahakyan, who is affiliated with the Prosperous Armenia Party, and thirdly, Budaghyan’s friend, Greta Andreasyan, who became the director of the No. 3 school in Ejmiatsin amid a scandal in 2019.

Even when all employees of regional subordinate institutions were strictly instructed to attend meetings with Nikol Pashinyan, the picture was, to put it mildly, disappointing. Probably seeing this and anticipating a grim result in the voting outcome on June 21, the Armavir regional government, led by the governor, took action to rectify the situation.

According to our information, on June 15, in the second half of the day, all school principals in the Armavir region were urgently summoned to the governor's office. It is noteworthy that the current governor, Hambardzum Matevosyan, is number 35 on the Civil Contract party list and is a candidate for parliament, currently officially on vacation.

The principals, aware of this situation, rushed to the regional government to understand what the urgency or tension was about. Reports indicated that there was a remarkable scene in the governor’s reception area, where after waiting to be received, the directors wandered for hours in the corridors and halls of the governor’s office until it was their turn, and the head of the education department personally escorted each one to the governor’s office.

It is important to note that there are 111 schools under regional jurisdiction, and all principals were summoned to the regional government. Remarkably, according to employees of educational institutions in the region, before the decision regarding the elections was made, Sonia Budaghyan had already begun to collect lists of individuals she deemed reliable from a small number of principals, and then from another group of principals as well, who would vote for the Civil Contract party.

Staff from regional educational institutions note that, of course, in the context of this lady's authority and management skills, the number of people listed on those lists could not have been significant or at least hopeful, which became even more evident during Nikol Pashinyan’s gathering in Armavir, where the attendance from the educational community was minimal (as previously reported, this lady personally made calls to directors, forcing them to reach her at a specific venue).

With the declining ratings and chances of Nikol Pashinyan in Armavir, the governor himself decided to speak with the principals, presumably confident that at least his words could change something or have further influence. After individual conversations with the governor, the principals left the regional government. The impact of the governor's remarks on the principals will be understood when the voting results are summarized. Meanwhile, we want to draw the attention of various monitoring organizations, the Central Electoral Commission, and international bodies to this fact. It is believed that the recordings from the governor's office CCTV are still preserved.