The governor of Armenia’s northwestern Shirak province unexpectedly called off a news conference scheduled for Wednesday amid reports that he will be sacked by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan just one year into his tenure.
Davit Arushanyan, affiliated with Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party, was due to meet journalists on the first anniversary of his appointment. His office called it off at the last minute, citing unspecified “urgent matters.”
Multiple media reports, including those by pro-government outlets, stated that Arushanyan is about to be dismissed. The Armenian government has not publicly denied those reports.
Civil Contract figures in the provincial capital, Gyumri, confirmed the expected sacking on condition of anonymity. They said that the move came as a surprise to them and pointed out that Arushanyan attended a meeting of the ruling party’s board in Yerevan chaired by Pashinyan as recently as Tuesday evening.
Calls to Arushanyan went unreturned. Later in the day he posted, what appeared to be a farewell message, to supporters on Facebook and released a video highlighting his one-year record. Arushanyan, 44, was the sixth Shirak governor appointed during Pashinyan’s nearly eight years in power.
Local officials and commentators linked his impending departure to church tensions that surfaced in Gyumri on December 7, when a mass was held at the city’s main church by clerics described by critics as renegade amid Pashinyan’s campaign to remove Catholicos Garegin II, the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
In advance of that ritual—attended primarily by Pashinyan’s supporters and allies—all 29 priests of the Shirak Diocese vowed anew to stand by Garegin. Some worshipers, during the liturgy, chanted the catholicos’s name. Others harassed pro-government legislators and bishops who traveled from Yerevan for the occasion. Hundreds more residents went to a nearby church for a separate mass presided over by local clergy in defiance of the government.
