Civilnet
By Zhanna Avagyan
Vagharshapat, Armenia’s fourth largest city and the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church, will hold local elections on November 16 to choose a new mayor and municipal council. The vote follows the May resignation of former mayor Diana Gasparyan from the ruling Civil Contract party, who stepped down after the Corruption Prevention Commission launched proceedings over a procurement deal between the municipality and her father-in-law.
After Gasparyan’s departure, the June 12 council session to elect a new mayor failed due to a boycott by 15 members of the ruling Civil Contract faction.
Parties and candidates
Eight political forces have registered: the Homeland Party, Victory Alliance (a coalition of the Forward and ARF Dashnaktsutyun parties), Civil Contract, Free Democrats, Mother Armenia National-Democratic Party, Heritage, Republic, and Pan-Armenian Front.
Civil Contract’s candidate is Argishti Mekhakyan, currently acting community head and former governor of Armavir Province. He previously led Khoy village, which was merged into the enlarged Vagharshapat community in 2025.
Other contenders include Grisha Harutyunyan of the Mother Armenia party, long-time head of Doghs village. Mother Armenia, led by Andranik Tevanyan, is a pro-Russian force that cleared the electoral threshold in the September 2023 Yerevan City Council elections and again in the April 2025 Gyumri elections.
Artyom Simonyan represents the Pan-Armenian Front, founded by former Defense Minister Arshak Karapetyan, who served briefly in that post from August to November 2021. Karapetyan, considered a pro-Russian figure, has continued his political activity from Russia.
Writer Khachik Manukyan runs under the Homeland Party, led by former National Security Service chief Artur Vanetsyan, who headed the NSS from May 2018 to June 2019 following the Velvet Revolution. In the 2021 snap parliamentary elections, his party joined forces with ex-president Serzh Sargsyan’s Republican Party to form an electoral alliance that entered parliament. Vanetsyan later renounced his mandate and broke political ties with the Republicans.
Harutyun Mkrtchyan is the candidate of the Republic Party, chaired by Aram Sargsyan, who is largely considered a pro-Western politician and an advocate of Armenia’s EU membership. Sargsyan’s party currently forms a coalition with the ruling Civil Contract in the Yerevan City Council. His family owns a major cement business. In May 2025, the ruling party passed a series of legislative changes benefiting Sargsyan’s business interests (see: Armenia’s raise of cement tariffs draws fire over favoritism).
The main challenger to the ruling party is expected to be the Victory Alliance, led by economist Sevak Khachatryan, a former vice-rector of the Armenian State University of Economics, whose bloc received 36.5 percent of the vote in 2021. The alliance unites the ARF Dashnaktsutyun and Forward parties and was founded by allies of former president Robert Kocharyan, including Narek Mantashyan, lawyer Aleksandr Kochubayev, Sevak Khachatryan, and Hovhannes Harutyunyan.
Other candidates include Movses Martirosyan of National Progress and Vahram Azatyan of the Free Democrats.
Campaign dynamics
The Central Electoral Commission lists 70,022 eligible voters. The campaign started on October 22 and has already seen alleged violations. Observers and media outlets have reported cases of misuse of administrative resources and illegal campaign posters.
The Union of Informed Citizens NGO reported that on October 21, several Civil Contract candidates took part in a charity event in Doghs village, distributing gifts to residents—an act the NGO said may constitute vote buying, a criminal offense under Armenian law.
Election monitors have also noted that some precinct commission members are openly campaigning online for the parties that appointed them, contrary to electoral regulations requiring neutrality.
In the 2021 local elections, Civil Contract won 54 percent of the vote in Vagharshapat, the “Ejmiatsin” alliance 36.5 percent, and the “Hayrenater” party 5 percent, with voter turnout slightly above 25 percent.
Vagharshapat, which now includes 19 settlements after two rounds of community enlargement, remains a symbolic and politically sensitive city ahead of the 2026 national elections.
Stories
