The two main candidates in a key local election in Yerevan on Friday accused
each other of planning to falsify vote results.

Ararat Zurabian, an opposition leader recently released from jail, is
challenging the incumbent mayor of the city’s central Kentron district, Gagik
Beglarian, in what promises to be a tense election scheduled for Sunday.
Armenia’s main opposition alliance led by former President Levon Ter-Petrosian
has declared Zurabian’s victory its most immediate political objective.

Beglarian, who is affiliated with the governing Republican Party (HHK), is seen
as the favorite to win the vote not least because of his party’s administrative
levers and financial resources. He claimed that the Armenian opposition and
Zurabian in particular are intent on rigging the vote.

“Vote rigging has become the main opposition weapon,” Beglarian told RFE/RL. “We
all know that the entire nation must fight against vote rigging.”

“For some unknown reason, they say that only government representatives do
falsifications,” he complained. “Opposition representatives also engage in
fraud.”

Zurabian laughed off the allegations, arguing that the opposition can barely
influence the electoral process because all but one seats in election
commissions in Kentron are controlled by HHK members and other government
loyalists. He said that it is Beglarian who will rely on a “whole system of
falsifications” on election day.

“Be certain that all kinds of vote falsifications that were observed during the
presidential election and all other elections will be repeated in Kentron,”
Zurabian told a news conference. “To talk about opposition falsifications means
to prepare ground for falsifications and try to blame them on the opposition,”
he said.

Kentron is one of the few Armenian communities where Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian
National Congress (HAK), of which Zurabian is a senior member, has fielded a
candidate. Earlier this month a HAK candidate was narrowly defeated by the
pro-government incumbent in another Yerevan district, Kanaker-Zeytun. The
candidate, Manuel Gasparian, refused to concede defeat, alleging massive fraud.

By Astghik Bedevian and Ruzanna Stepanian