Why Martun Grigoryan is silent, and who really punished ‘the boat-rocking’ — Tigran Kocharyan

On March 30, local elections were held in the Gyumri community, resulting in five political forces—Civil Contract Party, Communist Party of Armenia, Our City party bloc, My Powerful Community party, and Mother Armenia—securing seats in the Gyumri City Council.

The post-election intrigue continues to keep everyone in suspense. While the voting results are known, the status of the four opposition forces that passed the threshold remains unclear as they prepare to enter City Hall on April 16. Alpha News spoke with the news agency’s Editor-in-Chief, Tigran Kocharyan, about this topic.

“There are different versions of why Martun Grigoryan keeps silent. He is silent because his calculations did not come true and he did not win in Gyumri. Now he will be forced to form a coalition with his sworn enemy, Vardan Ghukasyan. This is most likely not his own initiative, but the initiative of the political forces supporting him, which in one way or another solve certain political issues. On a broader scale, the people in Gyumri rejected Nikol,” the expert said.

According to him, everyone expected Martun Grigoryan to support the opposition in forming a coalition, but he continues to remain silent.

“The morning after the elections, both Ruben Mkhitaryan and Karen Simonyan, who head the list of the two opposition forces, said they were ready to support Vardan Ghukasyan as the opposition force with the most votes. Everyone expected Martun Grigoryan to do the same. But he didn’t. He stayed silent, and 12 hours later, he made some kind of statement that Civil Contract would never be in power. That’s not what people were expecting. They expected Grigoryan to somehow support this coalition. The situation with Martun Grigoryan is being used by other people. The fact that he has problems with Vardan Ghukasyan is being used to either fail the elections or delay the finalization of the opposition’s victory in Gyumri,” Kocharyan concluded.