The local government elections, which were held in 4 communities of Yerevan, came to prove that the syndrome of February 19 and March 1 is not yet overcome. The best evidence of that are the incidents, which occurred in Arabkir community on Sunday. These events may only conditionally be called elections because there was no actual electoral process there. This became clear early in the morning when the gang of the son of the candidate Albert Yeritsyan attacked the supporters of Hovhannes Shahinyan and stabbed one of them. It became clear that the elections are going to be out of control. “Today I’d like to shake the hand of the winning candidate however that hand is bloody and I can’t shake a bloody hand,” said one of the candidates from the Heritage party Zoya Tadevosyan. “Not only money was offered but also people were intimidated, which ended up by the knife stab of a 32-year-old young man. His life is in a dangerous state right now,” Tadevosyan told A1+. “Nothing can be equivalent to the human life but on September 7 many of the residents of Arabkir community were put in direct risk,” stated candidate Hovhannes Shahinyan. He said that after the incident in the morning he didn’t follow the process and results of elections and he did his best to prevent the further bloodshed. As precisely described by a Heritage faction member Styopa Safaryan there was a real “money laundering” going on outside the precincts. Let’s note that the amount of the monetary bribe offered by Yeritsyan reached 20-50 thousand AMD per vote. It’s also worth mentioning that during the whole day the local criminal authorities had kept the residents of the district in the environment of fear and intimidation. Many incidents took place in front of policemen and special forces. On Sunday deputy chief of policy, “in charge of the vents of March 1” Alexander Afyan was also in Arabkir. The latter is a close relative of Yeritsyan. It’s noteworthy that these events took place only three days prior to the PACE session to discuss the situation in Armenia.
