Keys and Seal of Vardenis Mayor's Office Go Missing

Keys and the seal of the Vardenis mayor's office have gone missing. Yesterday, our team members went to the municipality to collect the keys to the mayor's office; however, the door was locked. Neither the key nor the seal were available, as stated in a conversation with Yerkir.am by David Shahnazaryan, a member of the enlarged Vardenis community council and a member of the 'Unified Vardenis' alliance.

“The fact is that the former leadership of Vardenis is not only obstructing the access of the elected mayor, Aharon Khachatryan, to his workplace but also the activities of the elected council. The issue is that in all the villages that are part of the enlarged Vardenis, where staffing changes and formation of a new staff were supposed to take place, this process is not occurring. The entire governance of the enlarged Vardenis community has collapsed. It is pure chaos. We do not know, for example, whether the powers of the Geghamasar or Tsovak village mayors have been suspended or not,” Shahnazaryan said.

He mentioned that they have submitted a written request to the head of the municipality's staff regarding the missing keys and seal, demanding the handover and acceptance protocols for the seal and office keys. “Until now, we still do not know who has the keys and the seal of the mayor's office. We do not know what actions could be taken with that seal,” said Shahnazaryan.

Addressing the border tensions and the sporadic gunfire from the enemy in the Gegharkunik region, which resulted in three casualties, Shahnazaryan stated that following these incidents, they visited border villages with the newly elected mayor Aharon Khachatryan to familiarize themselves with the situation and communicate with residents of the border villages. “After these incidents, we made our first working visit to the border – to Norabak and Kut villages – to meet with our compatriots living in the border villages,” he noted.

It should be recalled that the opposition's joint candidate, Aharon Khachatryan, was elected as the mayor of Vardenis on December 30 by the 'Unified Vardenis' and 'Aharon Khachatryan' alliances with 14 votes. Members of the council from the ruling party did not participate in the voting, and later proposed to annul the election results and hold new elections, subsequently appealing to the administrative court to annul the results of the mayoral election held on December 30.