"Second Round Cannot Be Allowed" - Vardan Ghukasyan Responds to Marutyan

Second round cannot be allowed in this situation, when the Azerbaijani army is standing near Yeraskh, when 100,000 refugees have flooded into Armenia, and every penny is crucial. This was stated by Vardan Ghukasyan, leader of the Public Voice party, in response to Hayk Marutyan's statement.

“Allowing a second round to engage in a campaign of ‘kuča-kuča’ is something I neither accept nor plan to do. There is a certain danger, the greatest danger is that the Rob-Sers clan should not strengthen its position. As opposition, I prefer that they do not strengthen rather than Avinyan being re-elected. If Avinyan is re-elected, the law allows for a vote of no confidence to be cast a year later and to remove him, but when the Rob-Sers clan is strengthened, it will be the complete end of the Republic of Armenia, it will become a guberniya without Syunik,” he said.

“I took an unacceptable position for myself; however, Hayk Marutyan said that he would either be the mayor or not, and I responded, ‘you will not be the mayor.’ Now, I am not concerned about the mayoral elections; I am interested in what will happen before the 10th,” he added.

It should be noted that former Yerevan mayor and mayoral candidate from the National Progress party, Hayk Marutyan, announced that they will boycott the first council meeting to go for new elections, and proposed to the Public Voice party to also boycott in order to prevent the reproduction of power.

The Public Voice party received 7 mandates according to the results of the Yerevan municipal elections held on September 17. No political force that participated in the elections and exceeded the electoral threshold has 33 mandates, which are necessary to elect the mayor.