Residents of the Khnatzakh village in the southern Armenian district of Goris say they’ll be boycotting upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.

They say that political candidates only come around making promises prior to elections. Afterwards, they disappear from sight.

Resident Liparit Martirosyan jokes and says, “They don’t even draft anyone from here. Do they know where the village is to draft young men?”

Another resident chimes in that candidates come and promise to build a retaining wall in the center of town but forget their promise even before the ballots are counted.

“Mark my words, we’ll even ripe up the crappy road that exists today. This way no one will be able to get in. Do you think we care? They don’t give a damn so why should we,” says Aramayis Davtyan.

“Yeah, write this all down and tell that Tsarukyan (referring to businessman Gagik Tsarukyan-ed.) to visit our village just once and make a speech. What, aren’t we Armenians? Is this what we fought for, to get treated like this,” Aramayis continues.

Village Mayor Karo Tavadyan agrees that the village hasn’t seen much in the way of renovation or repair work lately, except for some improvements to the water system.

The mayor says that the natural gas issue is the prime beef with residents. They claim that prior to the last elections several hundred meters of pipe were brought to the village with the promise that the village would soon be supplied with gas. Afterwards, others came and took the pipes away.

Mayor Tavadyan told me that he recently got a call from the Syunik Regional Authority. He was told that the village would have to invest 30 million AMD for the gas project.

“It’s ridiculous. We can use that money to use gas tanks for the rest of our lives,” he remarked.

The village’s annual revenue is a mere 5.6 million.

That’s why I was amazed to learn that the two story village school, with only twenty pupils, was renovated several times during the past few years, and with funds from the community budget.

The village has also allocated 300,000 AMD to celebrate “ABC Day” in the school. Was the need so great, I asked myself?

Then there’s the bloated municipal staff. The village only has 867 residents but spends 8.9 million on municipal salaries for its eleven employees. What do they all do?

It’s clear that residents are in the dark about what the municipality is up to. I saw no notices in the office detailing municipal council sessions or the decisions taken.

Municipal staff Secretary Paylak Arzoumanyan told me that some council members even refuse to sign their names to the adopted decisions and that one said he wouldn’t sign unless he was allocated a benefits package.

To say that the municipality performs sloppy work would be an overstatement.

As of June 1 of this year, only 65% of land taxes and 45% of land rents had been collected. The numbers were even worse before an administrative audit was performed.

Arzoumanyan said that 200 residents had left the village in the past four years.

On September 29, 2011, the government of Armenia allocated 720 million AMD to Syunik Marz as part of its regional project package.

18 pressing issues facing the Marz have been specified and 14 deal with urban communities.

It would seem that Khnatzakh will have to wait a bit longer for its problems to be addressed.