Local self-government elections 2009: summarizing the year

This year, one female mayor and 17 council members were elected.

During the past year, local self-government elections were held four times in a total of 79 communities. There were no enlarged communities this year. The elections were held on February 17^th, June 9^th, September 29^th, and December 8^th.

In response to a request from WommenNet.am, the Central Election Commission provided gender-disaggregated summary data on this year’s local elections.

During this year, mayors or mayors were elected in 60 communities, 21 of which were extraordinary. 204 candidates submitted documents to run for mayor, 5 of them withdrew their documents before registration.

Only two or 1% of the 199 mayoral candidates were women. All 24 candidates withdrew were men.

In the municipal elections, women were relatively more active. During 2019, elections to the Council of Elders were held in 26 communities, of which 9 were extraordinary.

A total of 309 citizens applied to run in the elections, four withdrew their documents before being registered.

Of the 305 registered candidates, 33 or 11% were women. 10 candidates withdrew within the deadline, two of them women. Of the 31 women in the council, 17 were included in the council, three of whom, as we have already informed, as a result of the December 8^th election. In fact, the success rate of female candidates was about 55% on average.

In general, as a result of local government elections in the past year only one woman out of the 60 elected mayors (1.6%), of the 178 councilors, 17 are women (9.5%).

According to the CEC, as of April this year the number of female community leaders in the 502 communities in the republic was 1.6%, while women in the councils constituted 9.7%.

The parties almost do not run in the local self-government elections

According to data provided by the CEC to WomenNet.am, 156 of the 175 candidates running for mayor were non-party 173 of them are self-nominated. The parties supported only two candidates. In one case, the Civil Agreement stands with his candidate, in the other, for the sake of Social Justice. By the way, in the latter case the candidate was not a member of that party.

As for the elections of the Council of Elders, in this case 290 out of 295 candidates are self-nominated, 276 are non-party. Two candidates were nominated by the PAP in the city council elections, one being a woman (Anna Galstyan in Artashat), three candidates for the Social Justice Party, one of whom is a woman (Araksya Stepanyan in Artashat).

By the decision of the Central Election Commission (CEC), the next year’s 2020 local elections are scheduled. Accordingly, elections are scheduled for March 15^th, June 14^th, and October 18^th.