On Saturday the nominated candidate of “Nig Aparan” got more 188 votes and won the elections for Aparan city mayor’s position. On Election Day, after the polling stations were closed the situation got very bad in Aparan and it was clear why a lot of police and national security officers had been taken to Aparan. And when people were taking the ballot boxes to the Territorial Electoral Commission from the polling stations, citizens of Aparan closed their way. Police and security officers tried to make people come down and this action made the situation more dangerous: people started to throw stones at police officers and cars not far from the pre-election headquarters of Gor Abrahamyan. The followers of R. Petrosyan made fire in the square between the two headquarters and made a strike till the morning.
The situation was still dangerous in the morning. The first incident took place at about 15:00. An old man named Onik told head of Aparan city police department Gagik Khachatryan and regional police board head: “You are the people that make people be like “the Saroyan brothers”. Don’t do that, go away. Don’t interfere in our life, let us live. You are the ones to blame”. Onik was kindly asking them to go out of the city in order not to let young people kill each other. There were only three polling stations in Aparan and the presence of numerous police and security officers and expensive cars from Yerevan in Aparan were enough to make the situation even more dangerous. The citizens of Aparan that had gathered near #1 school were complaining: “Why did they bring these cars here? Take your cars and get out of here!” The yellow “Brabus” luxury car of Arayik Hajrapetyan was also there. “They want the citizens of Aparan to see this car so as to know that there are such expensive and luxury cars in the world”, -said one of Gor Abrahamyan’s proxies answering to the complaint of citizens of Aparan that were telling them to take the cars out of the city. “Look! They are teasing us. We have seen these kinds of cars, take your cars out of the city!”, -cried one of the followers of R. Petrosyan. Ex NA member, head of R. Petrosyan’s pre-election headquarters Miasnik Malkhasyan was there and was asking the police officers to leave the city and take the cars out of the city too. Onik was still asking the head of Aparan police department to leave the city by asking him not to make people be like “the Saroyan brothers”. “You are like the Karamazov brothers, but not like the Saroyan brothers yet. You have organized a good play here, stay in fifty meters distance, go far from here. We are here not to let you be like “the Saroyan brothers””, -said G. Khachatryan. “If you want I can stay in one hundred meters distance. As you wish. But you are the people that caused this situation. I am a soviet person, I have worked for about 60 years for this country”, -said the old man. “This is not that country and that state, you are mistaken”, -said G. Khachatryan with irony. We asked Mr. Khachatryan why there were so many police officers there and he answered: “I don’t think there are a lot of policemen here. There are people here who want to cause chaos and a small thing may bring to this kind of situation. That is why we are here to prevent people from this kind of situation. This is not good first of all for policemen, but there are people who think that this is good and they do their best to bring the situation to chaos”. But he didn’t clarify who were those people that wanted to bring the situation to chaos. We asked G. Khachatryan how many police officers they had brought there and he answered that there were only twenty members of the regional police board and the other policemen were there on the base of the ministry order. According to him these were those policemen that are always present at stadiums, concert halls and other places where there are a lot of people and he thought this was normal.
The situation was dangerous yesterday in Aparan, and “Nig Aparan” members were doing their best to make people calm down and control the situation. Citizens of Aparan that had gathered in the square said: “They shouldn’t bring people from Yerevan to fight against us. They don’t know what young people can do if they get angry”.
Yesterday it was said that R. Petrosyan was going to apply to court and complain about the results of the elections, but the Central Electoral Commission hadn’t got this kind of application till 14:00 yesterday.
P.S. By the way, the pre-election headquarter of R. Petrosyan was located in the city administration building, which is prohibited by the RA Electoral Code. R. Petrosyan was backed by “Republican Party” and by defense deputy minister Manvel Grigoryan.