Yerevan residents will elect on September 17 a new municipal assembly that will in turn appoint the mayor of the Armenian capital. Thirteen parties and one bloc are vying for the assembly’s 65 seats.

The last mayor, Hrachya Sargsian, stepped down in March after only 15 months in office. Yerevan has since been effectively run by Tigran Avinian, a deputy mayor nominated by the ruling Civil Contract party for the vacant post. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian expressed confidence about the party’s victory during an election campaign fundraiser held late last month.

The opposition Hayastan and Pativ Unem alliances represented in the Armenian parliament have decided not to join the mayoral race. Some of their senior members have said that the upcoming elections are not significant given the grave security challenges facing Armenia as well as Nagorno-Karabakh.

Andranik Tevanian, a Hayastan parliamentarian, disagreed with the de facto boycott, resigning from the National Assembly and cobbling together an electoral bloc called Mayr Hayastan (Mother Armenia) to run for mayor. He has said that an opposition victory in Yerevan would pave the way for regime change in the country.

Tevanian made the same point as his bloc comprising several other outspoken opposition figures launched its campaign with a rally held in the city center.

Another major opposition contender is the Aprelu Yerkir party widely linked with Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian-born tycoon and philanthropist who moved to Karabakh last year. Its mayoral candidate, Mane Tandilian, too has described the Yerevan polls as an opportunity to precipitate the Pashinian government’s ouster.

Tandilian ruled out any post-election power-sharing deals with Pashinian’s party as she spoke during her party’s inaugural campaign event. “Our struggle is about strengthening our statehood,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

Tandilian, 50, served as labor and social affairs minister in Pashinian’s first cabinet in 2018.

Civil Contract and Avinian may also face a serious challenge from Hayk Marutian, a popular TV comedian whom Pashinian’s political team had installed as mayor after winning the last municipal polls in 2018. The city council controlled by the ruling party ousted Marutian in December 2021 after he fell out with the prime minister.

Marutian tops the list of council candidates nominated by a little-known party called National Progress.

Avinian was due to hold his first campaign gathering in the city’s southern Nubarashen suburb on Wednesday evening. His campaign is thought to have unofficially begun months ago, with Civil Contract disseminating videos of his speeches and other public appearances on social media.

In a recent report issued earlier this month, Independent Observer, a coalition of civic groups that will monitor the September 17, vote accused Avinian of having systematically abused his administrative resources to promote his mayoral bid.

The coalition also said that the administration of a local community in central Armenia comprising the town of Spitak and surrounding villages is drawing up lists of its Yerevan-based natives promising to vote for Avinian. It said the process is overseen by Gevorg Papoyan, the ruling party’s deputy chairman.

The allegations are based on recorded phone calls between local officials and a civic activist posing as an aide to Papoyan. Spitak’s deputy mayor and six village chiefs could be heard saying that they already have or will soon have such lists.

Papoyan strongly denied the allegations. Vahagn Hovakimian, a Pashinian ally heading the Armenia’s Central Election Commission, said, for his part, that “the audio does not testify to an abuse of administrative resources.”