The results of the snap local elections held on Sunday in the Armenian city of Gyumri and the Parakar community in the Armavir Province have become the first serious signal that Nikol Pashinyan may lose power in the 2026 parliamentary elections.
As previously reported, the ruling party Civil Contract won 37 percent of the vote in Gyumri, securing first place. However, this result is insufficient to elect the city’s mayor. At the same time, despite their individual defeats, the combined vote share of the opposition forces allows them to take control of local government. In Parakar, the opposition, which ran as a united bloc, achieved a confident victory with over 57 percent of the vote.
It is still too early to say to what extent the election results in Gyumri and Parakar reflect the general attitude of the electorate toward the government. However, these results have energized the parliamentary opposition and increased pressure on the government. For instance, Arthur Khachatryan, an MP from the Armenia faction, stated that “Nikol Pashinyan has clearly lost to the united opposition.”
“In Gyumri and Parakar, opposition representatives defeated Nikol Pashinyan. In Gyumri, the ruling party’s candidate Sarik Minasyan had Pashinyan’s personal backing. However, by voting against Minasyan, the people effectively voted against Pashinyan himself,” the MP said.
According to him, two years before the 2026 parliamentary elections, the people have shown that Pashinyan no longer has the public support he often claims to possess.
“Pashinyan himself realizes that his authority is rapidly declining. Since coming to power, his approval rating has dropped seven to eight times. If that weren’t the case, wouldn’t he have attended the Civil Contract campaign rally in Gyumri?” Khachatryan noted.
He Also Emphasized That the Election Results Reflected “Public Disillusionment and Distrust in Pashinyan, Both in Domestic and Foreign Policy”
“All of his mistakes, lies, and bluffing will ultimately work against him. He promised people whatever he wanted, but deceived them, and now they are saying, ‘Enough.’ Yet again, he pulled out the same old record: ‘We will return the stolen,’ ‘We’ll take back barbecue by barbecue, jeep by jeep.’ But people see it’s a lie. Their lives haven’t improved—unlike the lives of his close associates and loyal oligarchs,” said the opposition MP.
Before the elections, the ruling party claimed that the opposition candidates in Gyumri were backed by former presidents Serzh Sargsyan and Robert Kocharyan. It’s worth noting that in the 2021 snap parliamentary elections, widespread hatred of Kocharyan and Sargsyan was one of the main reasons for the defeat of the opposition forces they supported. However, it now seems that—even within the limited scope of local elections in just two communities—Kocharyan and Sargsyan’s electoral support appears to surpass that of Pashinyan.
Nevertheless, ruling party MP Arsen Torosyan does not believe their defeat in Gyumri threatens Civil Contract’s hold on power in the 2026 parliamentary elections.
“We are currently analyzing the election results. We believe that especially in Gyumri, we had a good result—36 percent. The opposition force that came second received half as many votes, which means the people still trust us. Yes, this result is below 50 percent, and we take that into account. That’s why we’ll continue working with voters and citizens to earn more support in the next elections, both local and parliamentary. We have no intention of stepping down,” said Torosyan.
Former MP and leader of the opposition Mother Armenia faction in Yerevan’s Council of Elders, Andranik Tevanyan, on the other hand, claims that the elections in Gyumri and Parakar confirmed “the illegitimacy of Nikol Pashinyan’s government.”
According to him, “even with the use of administrative resources and falsifications,” the ruling party Civil Contract managed to secure only a third of the votes from those who participated.
“If the authorities hadn’t used administrative leverage, Civil Contract would’ve gotten at most 10 percent of the vote in Gyumri,” he stated.
Tevanyan also noted that the elections in Gyumri and Parakar shattered the myth of Pashinyan’s so-called “invincibility.”
“It’s important to understand that challenging the authorities through several forces is more effective than uniting behind a so-called single candidate. Voters need real choices—not one ‘savior,’” he emphasized.
In addition, the opposition leader pointed out that the “anti-Russian and pro-Turkish bloc” EuroAlliance failed to pass the 6-percent threshold, dispelling yet another myth about anti-Russian sentiment in Gyumri.
“The elections in Gyumri carried national significance and became a kind of referendum: by rejecting Nikol, Gyumri said ‘no’ to his Turkish-Azerbaijani agenda,” Tevanyan said.
He also announced that, in order to prevent a Pashinyan-backed candidate from taking office, his faction in Gyumri’s city council will vote for the Communist Party’s candidate, former mayor Vardan Ghukasyan, who came in second.
Farhad Mammadov
Translated from haqqin.az
