"Hraparak": Either join Pashinyan's party or lose your job

The Armenian authorities set the task of increasing the number of members of Pashinyan's Civil Contract party in state structures in the run-up to the upcoming elections to the Council of Elders of Yerevan.

“In the administrative district of Kanaker-Zeytun, this process is carried out without formalities. We received a signal from the employees that they were called by the deputy head of the district administration Vardan Bekchyan and required to either join the Civil Contract or lose their job,” Caliber.Az quotes the article published by the Yerevan-based newspaper Hraparak as saying.

One of the party’s employees said that the recently dismissed head of the Kanaker-Zeytun administrative district, Karen Hakobyan, did the same, but he did it carefully, through Lilit Nikoyan, an employee of the district administration, to whom he allocated a special room.

Nikoyan previously studied and considered who could be included in the ranks of the Civil Contract and who could not, so that the process proceeded as quietly as possible. Now they have decided to abandon unnecessary formalities and force employees to join the party, the newspaper writes.