Maybe One Day We Will Lose: Avinyan

We must note that the force and candidate that gathered the highest percentage in Gyumri was Sarik Minasian. He collected double the votes compared to the candidate who came in second place. This was stated by Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan during a press conference today, April 11, while commenting on the results of the elections in Gyumri.

“In a parliamentary country, it is common not to see a single force gathering more than 50 percent. We have chosen the path of parliamentarism, and in the coming decades, many election results will be similar. Since 2018, our political force has adopted a clear path to make the Republic of Armenia a democratic, free, independent country with transparent elections. Regardless of what percentage of votes we gather in any election, we will not deviate from this path, and maybe one day we will lose in elections overall,” he said.

“Since 2018, we have had cases where our force or our candidate has not won in community leader elections in various communities; another candidate has won, and I think this is a very normal practice,” he added.

In response to the comment that before the elections, Sarik Minasian and the ruling Civil Contract party stated they would gather more than 50 percent, the mayor reacted: “In the pre-election period, many different statements are made by various forces. If you remember, during our municipal elections in Yerevan, our opposition colleagues spoke about the abuse of administrative resources, and we were almost nearing statements about electoral fraud. Then the elections took place, and we saw that the facts absolutely did not correspond to reality. Therefore, many statements made in the pre-election period should not be taken too seriously.”

It is noteworthy that in the Gyumri city council elections, the candidate of Civil Contract, Sarik Minasian, received 14 mandates, Vardan Ghukasyan received 8 mandates, Martun Grigoryan received 6 mandates, Ruben Mkhitaryan received 3 mandates, and the candidate of “Mother Armenia,” Karen Simonian, received 2 mandates. The four opposition forces have decided to vote for Vardan Ghukasyan when the mayor is elected.