According to our sources, a significant group of red capped men from the division came to Gyumri one day before the elections. Sources say that they were ranging from 200-500. The local structures were not the ones who asked for extra forces, but rather, they had sent the red caps from Yerevan taking into consideration the pre-election status in Gyumri. Preliminary statistics prove that the present mayor Vartan Ghukasyan won most of the votes after the elections. There were 23,350 people who voted for him; 17,011 voters gave their voice to Vartan’s opponent, member of the Armenian Republican Party Martin Sukiasyan, and Marzpetuni Markaryan (the third candidate) received 4445 votes. There were very few participants in Gyumri’s elections. Only 39.5% of the 119,137 registered voters took part in the elections. As in other cities, the authorities and the opposition were at each other in Gyumri too. The coalition had split in two in Gyumri. The “Rule of Law” political party was in favor of Vartan Ghukasyan, while the Armenian Republican Party and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation were unofficially for M. Sukiasyan . Despite this support, we must take into account the fact that there were all types of falsification mechanisms which were applied during the elections, as well as during the presidential and National Assembly elections. There was practically no public transportation on the early morning of Election Day. Public microbuses could barely be seen anywhere. The lines on the road for the buses were taken out to serve Vartan Ghukasyan and the candidates who were members of the alderman council. They were enjoying the fact that the council was sponsoring them. As for the distribution of electoral bribes, the two pre-election candidate headquarters are blaming each other for buying votes. M. Sukiasyan’s pre-election campaign members were at the Electoral Committee yesterday complaining about the results of the elections. As stated in the application sent to the #34 Electoral Committee, “The hundreds of drivers bringing V. Ghukasyan’s voters to the polls paid 3,000-5,000 to the candidate beforehand.” According to Sukiasyan’s chief of election headquarters Mikael Vardanyan, the main issue concerned registration. “The whole process is confusing. The rule states that the last version of registration, according to which the district elections needed to go through, had to be handed in 72 hours before the elections. But they are the ones who have turned in voter registration lists to the committees the night before or in the early morning of the elections,” said Mikael Vardanyan. They wrote in the application sent to the Electoral Committee that people who had been registered to vote, came to the polls on Election Day and started to have problems with the law after not finding their names in the lists. The judges have sent the voters to get some kind of document which certified their residency. The certificates were given by Gyumri’s “October Cinema” where V. Ghukasyan’s pre-election headquarters was located and vice-mayor of Gyumri Movses Juharyan happened to be there.
According to M. Vartanyan, they had made the voter registration lists so that as a result, the building located on Garegin Nzhdeh was registered in the list of the 34/66 poll located in the #30 school in the Textile neighborhood and at the 34/47 poll located in the #9 library of the workmen’s settlement. In addition, there is incorrect information in other polls too. “At around 5:00 p.m. there were approximately 26,000 voters. At 8 p.m., that number suddenly rose to 46,000. This is like a cold shower for everyone. It was amazing to see a brisk rise in voters during the course of 1-2 hours,” says M. Vartanyan. M. Vartanyan states that they had not expected these kinds of results. Basically, it turns out that electoral bribes can be made against the political party pertaining to the authorities. “The authorities and opposition did not have a base in our Gyumri. We are talking about the two opposing sides. One side had the major intellectuality and working class of the city (he means themselves-A.G.), while the ones on the other side are people who used their contacts with the authorities to get what they wanted,” said M. Vartanyan as he gave a total image. Now M. Vartanyan claims on protesting to the court regarding the election results.
In addition, a couple of days ago, V. Ghukasyan refused to answer our questions and sent us out of his headquarters very politely. As for the third candidate, Marzpetuni Markaryan, he believes that the elections were fair. “If a candidate receives 24,000 votes, then that means that he is legitimate,” said M. Markaryan. He also added that “they did what they did outside of the polls. As long as you haven’t caught the thief, you can not prove that he is a thief,” he said. He was basing his answer on the opinion that he had been pushed by V. Ghukasyan to be nominated as a candidate in order to steal votes from M. Sukiasyan.
P.S. During the days of the propaganda, V. Ghukasyan had announced that he would win M. Sukiasyan by at least 5000 votes. Basically, based on preliminary results, it turns out that the difference between the votes received by both candidates is approximately that much.