David Kazinyan: The detention of the Stepanavan mayoral candidate from Strong Armenia is due to the weakness of the Armenian government.

ArmInfo. The detention of Arsen Gevorgyan, the Strong Armenia party's mayoral candidate for Stepanavan, is due to the weakness of the current government. This was stated by David Ghazinyan, an MP from the Strong Armenia opposition faction, in a conversation with journalists at the National Assembly.

According to him, a strong government does not resort to such methods. The MP is confident that the authorities are not so much concerned about their candidate as about the situation as a whole. "After all, defeat in the Stepanavan elections will not mean that they will lose power and leave. They are simply afraid of any actions that could cause a 'snowball' effect," the opposition figure clarified.

At the same time, Ghazinyan highly values their political force's chances in the local government elections. According to him, they will become even higher if the Armenian authorities stop detaining people. Speaking about how their political force intends to participate in the local government elections if their candidate is arrested, the MP said there have been no discussions on this topic yet. However, he expressed confidence that the Armenian people are seeing what is happening and drawing their own conclusions. That is, as the MP explained, such actions could backfire.

When asked if they have an alternative candidate, Ghazinyan denied it. "At the same time, I would like to point out that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is currently focused not on national security, the economy, and other important areas, but on the work of investigative and law enforcement agencies. You know what's interesting? It turns out that Pashinyan knows everything: what will happen, who will be caught, how it will happen. There are many reasons for this, including external ones. Don't you see what's happening? It seems even his patrons are turning away from him. "After all, no one in history has succeeded in trying to sit on two chairs, and he won't succeed either," Kazinyan concluded.

Earlier today, Andranik Gevorgyan, a member of the Armenian parliament from the opposition Strong Armenia faction, reported on his Facebook page that mass searches and detentions of supporters of businessman Samvel Karapetyan's Strong Armenia movement had been underway in Stepanavan since early morning. Later, the Anti-Corruption Committee of Armenia confirmed the searches in Stepanavan, stating that they were being conducted as part of a criminal investigation and that 14 people had already been detained. One of those detained was Arsen Gevorgyan, a candidate for mayor of the Stepanavan community from Strong Armenia. The day before, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan offered to write to him personally to citizens and candidates for community heads in local government elections who were under pressure from the ruling Civil Contract party. However, by the evening of that same day, he himself had begun threatening opposition representatives. It is noteworthy that all of this is happening ahead of the local government elections in Stepanavan, which will take place on October 25.