Painted discussions in the painted parliament

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| 14:22:52 | 27-04-2005 | Politics |

PAINTED DISCUSSIONS IN THE PAINTED PARLIAMENT

The Parliament adopted the amendments to the Law on local self-governong
bodies by the first hearing. Before the second a hearing was organised today
in the Parliament in which representatives of the 930 communities of the
country took part. Only the Yerevan mayor was absent, and Nor Nork community
head Davot Petrosyan, whose father – the ehad of the NA Committee on state
and legal affaors had organized the hearing.

NA President Arthur Baghdasaryan found the hearings very imortant. He
mentioned that we must make the legislation on the Local self-governing
bodies (LSB) correspondent to the European standards, as this is commitment
taken upon in front of the EU. He informed that in the 4-day session startin
on May 2 the Constitutional amendments will be discussed and in this content
it is very important for the Parliamentarians to have an ides of the LSB
problems.

Arthur Baghdasaryan announced that almost all the political powers find that
the community head but rule not for 3 but for 4 years. Besides, Arthur
Baghdasaryan refered to the Yerevan problem, «If Yerevan is a community, we
must treat it as equal to all the other communities». The matter was
naturally the election of the community head. The NA President called on the
people to take part in the elections actively and to contribute to the
regulation of the field.

The main speaker, Vache Terteryan, deputy Minister regulating the local
governing system, noted that the problem of the law amendments is mainly the
raise of the role of the alderman and the control concentration. In the
conversation with the journalists Vache Terteryan noted that today many
community heads confuse self-governing with freedom and independence,
whereas being self-governed does not mean to be independent from the state.

We also spoke to the Ajapnyak community head Artsrun Khachatryan, who
complained not only of scarce authorizations and great responsibilities, but
also of the law and said that they will represent the draft by the community
heads.

And Arshak Sadoyan who took part in the hearings said about the efficiency
of the discussions, «In the painted parliament everything is painted,
including this discussion».
From: Baghdasarian