Armenian community of Gegamasar to be united with Vardenis for political reasons, local residents believe

The decision to unite the Gegamasar community with Vardenis is politically motivated, local residents say. The ruling force is striving to concentrate power in one hand in order to more easily control the electoral process, political strategist Armen Badalyan suggests. Demographer Artak Markosyan is of a different opinion: he believes that the unification is beneficial to small communities from the point of view of the economy.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on September 16, residents of villages in the Gegarkunik Region blocked the road from Sotk to Vardenis. They demanded to cancel the decision to unite Gegamasar with Vardenis. The local residents fear that the enlargement of the community will lead to an outflow of the population from the border zone.

According to Sevak Khachatryan, one of the organizers of the protest action, the head of the Gegamasar community supported the “Armenia” bloc in the elections, led by Robert Kocharyan, the second President of Armenia, and that was the reason for the decision to unite it with the community, led by a mayor loyal to the authorities.

Now they propose to unite with the communities in which 5000-6000 people live, and enlargement will lead to the fact that the interests of small villages will not be taken into account, the resident of the Gegamasar community believes.

The enlargement is aimed to centralize the administrative resource in the hands of the ruling political force, political strategist Armen Badalyan claims. According to him, the ruling force does not have enough resources to nominate candidates for the local government of each community.