Local elections were held on 25 October in 19 communities by party lists and in two more, Fioletovo and Shamiram, by majority vote. By the preliminary results the Central Electoral Commission published on Monday morning, Civil Contract came first in 18 of the 19, in two of them, Gavar and Goris, as the Solidarity alliance with the Businessman Party.
In five of the 19 communities Civil Contract was the only force on the ballot: Vayk, where it took 96.11 percent, Armavir with 96.07, Garni with 94.23, Vardenis with 93.78 and Akhuryan with 92.34. Where it ran alone the ballot offered a vote against, and between 3.39 percent of voters in Vayk and 7.06 percent in Akhuryan used it. Results for Fioletovo and Shamiram were not yet published.
The one community that went the other way was Stepanavan. There the Businessman Party took 41.54 percent, or 5,506 votes, against 35.32 percent and 4,681 votes for Civil Contract, with Strong Armenia on 19.68 percent. The same Businessman Party ran alongside Civil Contract in the Solidarity alliance in Gavar, where the alliance took 81.71 percent, and in Goris, where it took 93.57 percent.
In five of the 19 communities Civil Contract was the only force on the ballot: Vayk, where it took 96.11 percent, Armavir with 96.07, Garni with 94.23, Vardenis with 93.78 and Akhuryan with 92.34.
Where a rival list stood, the margins ran from the narrowest in the country to the widest. Yeghegnadzor was the closest, with Civil Contract on 48.06 percent, or 7,382 votes, against 46.86 percent and 7,197 votes for the Republic Party, a margin of 185 votes by CAW’s arithmetic. Artashat was the widest, 85.95 percent, or 23,729 votes, against 10.59 percent for the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.
Hrazdan gave the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, its only rival, 9.16 percent against 90.82. Araks gave the Justice Alliance 28.02 percent against 71.95. The rest of the field ran from 67.61 percent in Martuni to 92.76 in Jermuk.
On Monday afternoon Pashinyan went live on Facebook and took up the percentages himself. “I am by no means happy that we received 90-plus, 80-plus or 70-plus votes in a number of communities, because, however pleasant these figures may seem at first glance, these percentages evoke certain associations,” he said, in the words Armenpress carried in English.
He named three problems, as Armenpress summarised them: the impression of authoritarianism that such figures create, the weakness of public oversight, and the opposition itself, which he said should be “state-centered, young, intellectual, objective and honest.”
His answer to the third problem was to do nothing. “Our conclusion is that we should do nothing,” he said, because “the government cannot and must not create an opposition, because that would be a controlled opposition, a fake opposition.”
Pashinyan described the opposition he has in other terms in the same broadcast. The “Rob-Serzh-Kaluga-Ktrich forces, or, in a word, the espionage forces, the four-headed party of war, must be destroyed,” he said, and “the criminal oligarchy and mafia must be uprooted.” The hyphenated names are his shorthand for his opponents.
The two wishes sit in one speech: an opposition he would respect, and the destruction of the one he has. Sunday’s field measures the gap between them. In five communities no other list stood at all, and where one did, the result ranged from a 185-vote margin to a 75-point one.
Two days after the local vote, the National Assembly sits today with the ratification of the TRIPP agreement on its agenda, as Armenpress reported on 23 October when the schedule was set.
What a governing party can widen without creating the opposition it says it will not create is the field: how many lists stand the next time communities vote. The percentages follow the field.