Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan today congratulated Yerevan’s new mayor Hrachya Sargsyan.

Yesterday, the Yerevan Municipal Council ousted Hayk Marutyan as mayor in a no-confidence vote. Most of the My Step (Im Kayl) members aligned with Pashinyan voted to remove Marutyan who was elected to the post in 2018 on the My Step electoral list.

Pashinyan today hosted the new mayor and head of the municipal council’s My Step faction leader Armen Galjyan and said that Marutyan had cut his ties with the ruling Civil Contract party, had failed to implement its programs, and had to go.

The My Step Alliance, comprised of the Civil Contract Party, the Mission Party and various civil society representatives, was formed in August 2018.

Pashinyan, in a statement released by his office today, said that Marutyan had created an institutional crisis within the Yerevan Municipality and that the no-confidence vote was an “institutional resolution” of the problem.

Pashinyan said his government has supported the Yerevan Municipality in the past and will continue to do so.

Following yesterday’s no-confidence vote, Marutyan addressed the Yerevan Municipal Council and struck back at his detractors.

Marutyan said he dropped out of the Civil Contract party over political disagreements but that he never left the My Step Alliance. He defended his track record as mayor and rebutted claims that he had veered away from the principles of the so-called 2018 Velvet Revolution.

Marutyan, in his farewell address to the council, accused his detractors as the real betrayers of the 2018 revolution, claiming that the ruling party had done little to reform the way the government works and had continued the corrupt practices of the past.