WHEN THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND, OR HAVE TO PRETEND NOT TO UNDERSTAND THE ESSENCE OF THE MAYOR ELECTION
Hakob Badalyan
LRAGIR.AM
11:22:24 – 01/04/2009
On March 31, the parliamentary member from ARF Dashnaktsutyun, member
of the parliamentary committee to study March1 Artyusha Shahbazyan
stated that the Yerevan mayor election is not a possibility for
a system change in Armenia. The reason for Artyusha Shahbazyan’s
statement is evident. He stated this because, like all the other
coalition parties, the Dashnaktsutyun has a question of lowering the
Mayor election’s importance, in which result the governmental forces
will be possible to be at an advantage over Levon Ter-Petrosyan. The
governmental parties have all the rights to bring the election at
any level but how they will ground the acquisition of that right.
>From this point of view, for example, the statement of the
Dashnaktsutyun parliamentary member is out of any logic. It is either
above or too below the logic. The point is that the Mayor election
already means a system change. In other words, when in accordance
with the amendments to the Constitution, the Mayor is being elected
and not appointed; this supposes a system change in the country. It
is a little difficult to say what the ARF Dashnaktsutyun means by
saying a system change, but it the system is clear to be changed in
the country to every extent.
In other words, the opposition is given a chance to have power in
the capital. If the mechanism of election is launched, consequently,
it creates a possibility that for the opposition to win too. And if
the opposition wins power in Yerevan it changes the balance of the
governmental system bringing about a competitive situation instead
of a monolith pyramid. It is all the same even if we assume that the
Yerevan authorities will have only the streets cleaning and trees
and flowers planting function, the situation is changed completely
anyway; when the garbage of the capital is cleaned this means that
the garbage of the half of the country is cleaned by an oppositional
force. And the garbage should not be underestimated, because due to
it all the country is overwhelmed with garbage now.
Thus, if we watch the Mayor election from the governmental point of
view and situate it in the framework of daily problems solutions,
the system change is inevitable the same, if another political force
assumes the responsibility for solving these problems. So, the daily
round, which seems a trump to the government, is just an illusion a
conscious or unconscious illusion, which is showed by the governmental
party members who do not understand the logic of the mayor election,
or just pretend not to understand it.