DEMOCRACY ON THE LEVEL OF YEREVAN
Lilit Poghosyan

Hayots Ashkharh Daily
11 Dec 2008
Armenia

Paruyr Hayrikyan Proposes

Parliamentary hearings were held in the National Assembly yesterday,
prior to the second reading of the bill on "The Local Self-Governance
and Territorial Administration".

Why should the Major of Yerevan be elected by the internal
representative body, in the person of the council of the aldermen,
and not by the citizens of Yerevan? Why should we pin our hopes upon
indirect elections, if we can do it directly, that is to say by way of
direct elections? Why should they restrict the entry of the political
forces to the parliament?

Is it right to define 100% proportional election system for the
formation of the council of aldermen and to deprive the individual
citizens from nominating their candidacy? Are we not humiliating the
institute of the aldermen by defining that the Major is competent to
dissolve this representative instance, any time?

In response to our questions leader of "National Self-Determination
Union", participant of the inter-party discussions Paruyr Hayrikyan
expresses his viewpoint.

"In general the legislative body, in this case the Parliament of
Yerevan, is established as a representative body, not to be interested
in the contents of law, but to be guided by principles.

It is evident that the main forces involved in th e elaboration
of this bill are interested in this law, that is to say they wrote
the bill for themselves, but it must have been for Yerevan and the
citizens of Yerevan. This is the main issue.

According to the new Constitution Yerevan has become a Community
and we already have a tradition of forming communities, even if
not perfect, still a tradition, according to which the head of the
community is elected by direct elections. Whereas alderman is not a
separate organizational unit.

Its activity is guided by the leaders of the communities. Consequently
that representative body can’t be counterbalance and supervise it. That
is to say the mechanism of the counterbalance doesn’t work perfectly.

Yerevan is becoming a community. And we are annihilating the existing
mechanism of counterbalance instead of making it perfect. The
representative body, the council of the aldermen, elects the
Major. This doesn’t contribute to the development of democracy.

It is quite unacceptable to artificially give 20% more to the electoral
unit. It is also very strange that they create lots of obstacles. If
it is a representative body so why do they create obstacles for them.

For instance 9 parties can obtain 20% votes, but because this is
not enough to overcome the minimum barrier they will not have a
representative in the parliament of Yerevan. And on the contrary,
one party gets 20% and the votes of all the other parties, which
failed will pass to them. This is not a healthy approach."

"What do you propose instead?"

"Our stance is clear. The Major of Yerevan is elected by direct
elections, in parallel with the elections of the council of the
aldermen.

The electoral units must participate in the elections of the aldermen,
which are: the parties, the unions, and the citizens.

Those who got maximum votes gain seats in the parliament and they
elect their Speaker. The latter heads the activity of the aldermen
with his/her staff.

Each member of the parliament votes according to the votes he/she
has obtained. If someone participates in the elections and obtains 40
thousand votes, the other electoral unit – party, obtains 60 thousand
votes and three people gain seats in the parliament, each of them will
have 20 thousand votes. This is what we call ideal democracy. Each
voting turns into a referendum, with the involvement of Yerevan –
and the decisions are made by the ratio of not 33 for, 32 against,
but 400 thousand for, 350 thousand against. Thus the parliament of
Yerevan becomes a perfect representative body."

"Life shows that in countries like ours each election turns into a
trouble for our society. Why should we hold elections every year and
create tension in the political circles?"

"If you subordinate the idea of democracy to your own considerations,20
this means you are not honest. Democracy is an absolute value. And
if you don’t see progress this doesn’t mean that you must give up,
on the contrary you must try more and more.

And if you are elected for 2 years, you feel less tension. And
in case you are not elected you will not protest, you will think,
"Ok I will try next time".