"Die, but don't give up Gyumri!": opposition gave battle to Pashinyan's party in local elections

The candidate for the post of mayor of Gyumri from the opposition party "My Strong Community" Ruben Mkhitaryan made an important statement after the publication of the preliminary results of the elections in The Council of Elders of the city, VERELQ reports.

In his address to the residents, the politician expressed his readiness to support former mayor Vardan Ghukasyan, a candidate from the Communist Party of Armenia, who received the largest number of votes among the opposition forces.

Mkhitaryan stressed that he is ready, together with his associates, to vote for Ghukasyan without any preconditions and without applying for any positions. He noted that he was fulfilling his election promise to support the opposition candidate with the highest number of votes in case of his own loss. The candidate expressed satisfaction that he had contributed to preventing the unconditional victory of the ruling party in Gyumri.

Earlier it also became known that the opposition alliance "Mother Armenia" also expressed its readiness to support the opposition force that gained the most votes.

The leader of the alliance Andranik Tevanyan said that their team has done a great job in a short time and now it is important to unite the opposition forces. He confirmed their readiness to support the opposition leader without coalition negotiations and a struggle for positions in order to deprive the Civil Contract party of power.

According to the preliminary data of the Central Election Commission, according to the results of vote counting from 81 of 82 polling stations, the ruling Civil Contract party led by Acting Mayor Sarik Minasyan leads with 36.80% (16,938 votes).

The Communist Party of Armenia under the leadership of Vardan Ghukasyan is in second place with 20.71% (9,537 votes), and the alliance "Our City" of MP Martun Grigoryan is in third position with 15.85% (7,296 votes). Five political forces, including the My Strong Community party and the Mother Armenia Alliance, were elected to the Gyumri Council of Elders.

And here's what the author of the Telegram channel "Comrade General" writes about the elections:

Gyumri, as some colleagues have already noticed, is also Pashinyan's personal loss. This is the verdict of the "velvet" revolution, which began from here seven years ago.

This is the second, after Yerevan, evidence that the ruling party, on which Pashinyan relies and in whose name he rules the country, has lost the trust of people, just like Pashinyan himself.

Finally, this is a mortally insulting choice of voters for Pashinyan — instead of Artsakh-haters and Turkophiles, they preferred the "former", even with the old baggage of corruption.

I think the first move of this unbalanced and evil subject will be an attempt to reset the election results. That's why the lights were cut off in Gyumri yesterday — to question the result. If he does that, he will sign a political sentence for himself. At the re-election, poor Sarik will not get even half of the current votes.

It is important to note that on the eve of the elections were held in the community of Parakar, where the turnout exceeded 50%. Volodya Grigoryan, a member of the Country for Life party and the leader of the local opposition bloc, scored more than 56% here. Pashinyan's nominee Ludwig Gulnazaryan scored only 31.8%.