This weekend will see mayoral elections in two districts of Yerevan. While two pro-government candidates will battle it out in Nor-Nork, the race for the mayor of Yerevan’s central district appears to be the toughest as it pits a government-backed incumbent against an opposition candidate. During the latest rally of the opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC), leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan emphasized the importance of local elections.

“All elections are important. And local elections are particularly important because local government is the closest government to people and people usually judge through local government bodies,” the ex-president said.

The opposition participates in local elections, despite the fact that it has already suffered defeats in two districts of the capital. The turnout of voters in the most recent local elections in Yerevan was about 30-33 percent. The elections were marred by violence and open vote buying.

Ter-Petrosyan says that in a sense he understands the authorities’ resorting to any means to keep their power in parliamentary and presidential elections. But doing the same in local elections, according to him, is “ultimate arbitrariness”.

Political analyst Yervand Bozoyan says that district mayoral elections are the low administrative leverage for upper echelons of power. According to him, a person is given a “carte blanche” to become a district mayor so that in the future he will provide his services to the incumbent authorities during national election.

“Today we formally have a democratic system; the real system does not work here. We know that district mayoral elections are on, but no one of us has any expectations from these elections. No matter who wins the election, whether he has the surname of Poghosyan, Kirakosyan or Mesropyan, nothing will change. But we are making an imitation that struggle is on, which might be interesting in terms of intrigue, but people are not interested in them in terms of their content,” Bozoyan says.

According to him, today’s system of values is distorted and is more a system of individuals. Meanwhile, the political analyst says that the real basis of the country is laid during local elections. If it doesn’t happen, he says, a country cannot be democratic.

Ararat Zurabyan, a candidate for district mayor in Yerevan’s Kentron district supported by the opposition, says that such processes are taking place on the political plane that it was impossible not to participate and give the public an opportunity to achieve a concrete victory. Zurabyan, who led Yerevan’s district in 1996-2002, says that city center is Yerevan’s mini-model, the heart of Yerevan, it has a population of about 200,000 and a victory here will be important for further activities.

“Community heads in Armenia are not leaders of local governments, but rather of semi-criminal-police authorities used for the reproduction of authorities,” says Zurabyan. “I consider my participation within the framework of the logic of our political and all-state struggle.”

(Zurabyan was arrested for his alleged role in the post-election unrest in March but was released in summer. However, the criminal case against him has not been dismissed yet.)

Zoya Tadevosyan, who represents the opposition Heritage party, participated in the Arabkir district elections earlier this month and lost. However, she does not accept her defeat.

“I think that today it is not the opposition that participates in elections, but the authorities. Participation is already a victory, by this we show our intolerance towards the incumbent authorities and try to take people in the right direction,” she says.

According to Bozoyan, the country’s political elite is a weak elite according to a political theory, has no state thinking, has no ideas about public governance systems. And the people simply look for a good king, be he a district mayor or the country’s president.

“Western constitutions make it possible to have a system in which checks and balances do not allow one to be a bad president or local mayor. A western democracy is based on the following concept – there are good and bad sides in every person, so a system preventing a person from doing dishonest actions should be created,” Bozoyan says.

The lowest voter turnouts are registered in local elections and vote buying reaches its climax. The political analyst says that people do not believe that there will be changes in their life in conditions of this prefect or that, which means that this model of government does not work and is merely formality.

Bozoyan says that system changes are needed, and they can be achieved by means of constitutional reforms.

“But if there is appreciation of the need for these changes, then either the authorities or the opposition should declare, but neither of them does this. The authorities say that it is a good system as it is, they govern it well and that the opposition obstructs them, and the opposition says you are criminals and we are good and more clever,” he says. “It means that mechanical struggle for power is on. Struggle becomes of a subjective nature and loses its contents. No matter who we elect – president or local mayor, there will be no content in it.”