On November 20 “Nig Aparan” Nationalistic Union will fight against itself during the elections for Aparan city mayor. There are two candidates for this position and both of them are from the same Union. One of them is the existing mayor, deputy president of the Union Razmik Petrosyan. And the other one is member of the Union Gor Abrahamyan.
It is worth to mention that the elections had to be organized on October 23, but the candidates (the third candidate was a member of that Union too) asked to delay the elections because of the bad situation that was caused there. But the negotiations failed and R. Petrosyan refused to withdraw his candidacy. The citizens of Aparan say that they will explain to citizens of Aparan that live in Yerevan what real backing is and that they will not let anyone be nominated in Aparan from Yerevan, even when he is backed by someone strong.
Arayik Hakobyan informed us that on November 3 head of “Nig Aparan” Union, the general prosecutor of Armenia Aghvan Hovsepyan went to Aparan and said that he backed his candidate Gor Abrahamyan. According to Mr. Hakobyan this was the reason why the citizens of Aparan decided to protest and prove that Aghvan Hovsepyan can’t affect their suffrage by power pressure. “The citizens of Aparan applied to the general prosecutor and asked not to interfere in the elections and let it be fair and democratic. Aparan is in chaos today: some people are threatened to be left out of their jobs, some criminals are released from prisons to help them to be elected. It is chaos here today. Citizens want to vote for the existing mayor, he is a hero of the war of Karabakh, but Aghvan Hovsepyan doesn’t advocate him”, -said Mr. Hakobyan. According to Mr. Hakobyan, Aghvan Hovsepyan doesn’t like R. Petrosyan because he didn’t obey his orders a couple of times. Besides that, citizens of Aparan don’t understand why this Union is so actively involved in political developments when it is not even a political institution: “What kind of relations does Nig-Aparan have with Kapan or Artik cities in order to nominate their candidates there? There is no citizen of Aparan in Kapan. So what? The fact that Aghvan Hovsepyan is the general prosecutor still doesn’t mean that he can get wherever he wants to go. This is the reason why people protest. The general prosecutor doesn’t have a right to be a political leader in Aparan when he doesn’t know where it is. Now he does whatever he wants here. If someone is not from his team, he makes him leave his position and resign from his job. Razmik Petrosyan is a principal and strong person, that is why he doesn’t like this. They nominated a person for the community head position in Davitashen and said that all citizens of Aparan had to go there and support him both financially and by other means. R. Petrosyan does not like these kinds of things and doesn’t take part in these developments. And they say if you are not with us this means that you are against us, this is the problem. That is why they put pressure on him”, said A. Hakobyan and assured that they would protect themselves by all means and that they had left “Nig Aparan” Union in order to protect themselves.
Yesterday Gor Abrahamyan was campaigning in #2 school of Aparan, where there were members of the Union too. The director of the school in Yerevan named after Daniel Varoujan Ofelia Petrosyan made a speech and criticized those men that had taken part in the war: “This is our fault, this is the teacher’s fault. If we stand up, beat them and tell them that they must obey and shut their mouths, this will not happen. It was good of them to participate in the war. They are very good guys, but…I don’t mean to say that the time when there were “good guys” has passed, but we can’t always obey them. It is the time of the intelligentsia. You must make the campaign, the teachers must do that. We mustn’t come from Yerevan to do that here. A citizen of Yerevan must not come here and tell you that you should vote for a person that is going to build your houses and your city, you must make that a reality yourselves. You must also campaign among your neighbors and your relatives”, -said Ofelia Petrosyan in her speech. Then she started to speak about what kind of privileges a mayor should have besides a diploma from a private university: “A mayor must be able to be strong and bring grants and other financial supports to Aparan from Yerevan”. And then in order to show the reputation and how serious the Union is, she said that a lot of people considered their announcements very serious and often asked them to sign on their documents just to show other people that they were supported by such a strong Union. “Now a lot of people dream of being a citizen of Aparan. They dream of that so much that they may say that their grandpas have raped a woman from Aparan in order to connect their roots to Aparan”, -said Mrs. Ofelia. In spite of this, she feels pity about the external appearance of the city: “I am ashamed when my friends ask some officials to come here, because they will be amazed to see how Aparan looks like”. Mayor R. Petrosyan said the following in regard to this: “It is amazing. This situation will not change if a citizen didn’t care about anything and remembers the city only during the elections. If they try to solve the problem based on personalities, this will mean that the problem is of a political character.” We asked co-president of “Nig Aparan” Union Vrej Markosyan to clarify why they couldn’t nominate only one candidate from their Union and he answered: “We couldn’t find a solution. Gor Abrahamyan is a more clever and more experienced person. Razmik played a great role in the development of our city, but he doesn’t have good management skills as a mayor”, -he said. Answering to announcements of people that they would not let any oligarchs and officials come from Yerevan and rule them he said: “Neither officials nor oligarchs have come here. And they will not. The problem is that “Nig Aparan” wants to see this city more modern and clean. There are leaves under trees and in the territories that have not been cleaned for twenty years”, -he said. We asked him why they had just noticed the leaves of twenty years and he answered “He didn’t want to do this work, he promised, but didn’t do it”. Gor Abrahamyan told teachers that he had a very good position and job and got more money per month than the mayor’s salary was, but he had to leave that job because he couldn’t be indifferent to his city and problems there. “I have promised a lot of things, because I am backed by Nig Aparan”, -he said in his speech. We asked him to explain the reason why some people said that he had to leave his position and that he had been obliged: “It is not right, I came here myself, this is my will”. By the way R. Petrosyan informed us that “Nig Aparan” hadn’t made a final decision on whom to advocate yet. In regard to this he said: “Some decisions have been made by some individuals. I am in good relations with them. Maybe there are problems in the political field. I have told them that I would never act against my “friends of war””, he said. With this idea he means the case with the elections in Davitashen when he refused to advocate Sourik Ghukasyan by saying that Rouben Gevorgyan had been his friend during the war period.
In Aparan an old person (Aristakes Eloyan) came to us and told us that there would be a war in Aparan in case the elections were violated by the powers from Yerevan: “They do not have to bring kings from outside to rule us. They will be faced with an unpredictable situation if they come here. If they want a war, we will fight in that war. We have made the Turkish army of 20.000 people go out of these territories, no one can come here and tell us what to do. We don’t need them. Our roots are here and we must make decisions ourselves and only here. No Union can make a decision and replace our mayor. What does this mean? Who are they to do that? If they violate the elections we will collect hundreds of signatures and will send to embassies to show what is going on here. This is a shame for us. We will be able to speak about the results of the Constitutional referendum in Aparan only after these elections”, -he said. By the way, Araik Hakobyan said that the developments of the Constitutional referendum depended on the results of the upcoming elections. He also said that in case Aghvan Hovsepyan tried to violate elections and support their candidate, the citizens of Aparan would make the Constitutional referendum process slower.