The residents of the village of Norabak of the Gegharkunik Marz have crowned their struggle with victory.

Following the March 4, 2007 election of the head of the village administration, they appealed to the Court of First instance of Vardenis to have the election results overturned.

There had been two candidates for the office of village mayor – Vardenis resident Artak Karapetyan and Vazgen Asatryan from Norabak.

On March 14, the three-day session of the Court of First Instance of Vardenis was completed. “When they opened the bag of ballots and counted them it turned out that some of the ballots cast for Artak Karapetyan were invalid and also 23 people had no right to vote since they were not registered in Norabak,” said Armen Ghazaryan, a land surveyor and treasurer of the village administration, who was a proxy of Vazgen Asatryan. The court declared the decision by the election commission invalid. And after recounting the ballots, the court ruled to pronounce Vazgen Asatryan the winner of the election to the post of head of the Norabak administration.

Representatives from the Marzpet's Office are scheduled to visit Norabak to present the new mayor to the community.

The Norabak election can serve as example. No political party participated in these processes or controlled the villagers, no one from the opposition camp even tried to be present at the precinct, the villagers simply stood up themselves and defended their own rights.