Security forces raided the Gyumri municipality building in the morning, blocking its entrances and trying detain Ghukasian and several other local government officials. As they met with strong resistance from municipality staffers, the mayor appealed to local residents to “stand by our city and our dignity.”
“Join us, speak up, don’t stay silent,” he said in a social media post as hundreds of his angry supporters rallied outside the building cordoned off by police.
Scores of other supporters remained inside the building. They did not let law-enforcement authorities take Ghukasian away even after the mayor emerged from his office early in the afternoon and said he is ready to go to jail.
The standoff led the Armenian police to send reinforcements from Yerevan. A deputy chief of the police and the commander of Armenian interior troops also arrived in Gyumri.
A Yerevan-based riot police unit used force to push the crowd away from the building before other officers, among them masked servicemen, escorted Ghukasian out of his office and drove him away later in the afternoon. They clashed with some of the angry protesters moments later, detaining dozens of them. The remaining crowd did not disperse immediately after the arrest.
Meanwhile, another law-enforcement agency, the Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC), issued a statement saying that Ghukasian, the city’s chief architect and six other officials have been charged with bribery. It claimed that they demanded $10,400 from the owner of an illegally constructed structure in return for not demolishing it and legalizing it instead.
Some opposition figures in Yerevan were quick to dismiss the criminal proceedings as politically motivated. They linked the accusations to Pashinian’s statements made in the Armenian parliament on October 1.
The prime minister pledged to “throw out” Mayor Vartan Ghukasian from “the political and public arena.” He responded to Ghukasian’s latest calls for the government to not only repair but also deepen its relations Russia, saying that they are directed at Armenia’s “sovereignty.”
Pashinian’s political allies confirmed afterwards that the premier intends to oust Ghukasian. One of them said vaguely that he will be removed by “the people of Gyumri.”
For their part, opposition leaders accused Pashinian of seeking to overturn the results of a municipal election held on March 30. Four local opposition groups installed Ghukasian as mayor in April after collectively defeating Pashinian’s Civil Contract party in the ballot.
Civil Contract had already been accused of resorting to politically motivated criminal cases and foul play to reverse its defeats in local polls held in other major urban communities, including Armenia’s third largest city of Vanadzor. The leader of a local opposition bloc, Mamikon Aslanian, was arrested in December 2021 just as he was poised to again become Vanadzor mayor. Aslanian spent two and a half years in prison before being sentenced in January this year to four and a half years’ imprisonment on corruption charges denied by him.
