They showed the ruling Civil Contract party winning 55 percent of votes cast in the village of Kirants that lost large swathes of land as a result of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s territorial concessions to Azerbaijan in 2024. Many local residents protested against the unilateral handover at the time, triggering massive antigovernment demonstrations in Yerevan.
Pashinian’s political allies said the vote result demonstrates that most Kirants residents now support the Armenian government’s appeasement policy towards Azerbaijan. Gohar Vartanian, who has for years worked at the village administration, dismissed those statements in a June 8 Facebook post. The ruling party prevailed there only because of soldiers and border guards forced to vote for it in the local polling station, she claimed, urging opposition supporters in Yerevan to stop berating her fellow villagers.
“Dear government, you don’t give a damn about our people,” wrote Vartanian. “For you, the important thing is to show that people in Kirants are happy and grateful. Never mind what these people actually think and feel. Dear opposition people, stop making ordinary people scapegoats and try to look for problems elsewhere.”
Residents of Kirants block a road to protest against a land handover to Azerbaijan, April 20, 2024.
The young woman, who has repeatedly criticized the government in the past, claims that she was ordered to resign after refusing to delete the post. In her resignation letter dated June 10, she said that she “can no longer be part of this morally corrupt system that violates my right to free speech.”
“I know that they wanted to fire me before, but this [post] was probably the last straw for them,” Vartanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service at the weekend.
“Their goal was to show that like in other border villages, people in Kirants are satisfied … and voted for the authorities,” she said. “But my post showed the opposite.”
Vartanian declined to specify who ordered her to quit her job. In her words, her immediate superior has also tendered resignation. She would not say whether that superior is the village administration chief, Kamo Shahinian.
Kirants is part of a district comprising Pashinian’s hometown of Ijevan. The district administration headed by Civil Contract member Artur Chagharian has not yet commented on Vartanian’s claims. Chagharian did not answer weekend phone calls from RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The Armenian opposition has rejected as fraudulent the nationwide election results giving victory to Pashinian’s party. Pashinian has denied the fraud claims and accused his main election challengers of having bought hundreds of thousands of votes.
