Zakaryan innocent, constitution to blame

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| 12:24:44 | 09-07-2005 | Politics |

ZAKHARYAN INNOCENT, CONSTITUTION TO BLAME

For already year and a half `Investigating Journalists’ public organization
has been at law with the Yerevan city administration. All the suits of the
organization were satisfied.

However the city administration does not consider it a basis for fulfilling
the decisions of the courts and furnishing the organization with the
information needed. The Yerevan city administration still remains a closed
structure and does not want the residents to be aware of its activities. The
demand to make the Mayor elected is in a way targeted at the settlement of
this problem.

The elected Mayor will have to account to the people. `For example the
people have no influence upon Yervand Zakharyan. The whole city is being
ruined. A great construction project has been launched and nobody asked the
opinion of the city residents. The Mayor is subordinate to the President. In
normal states the Mayors are afraid of taking personal decision, since he is
elected by the people. If he makes a mistake the citizens can claim his
resignation’, chairman of the `Investigating Journalists’ Edik Baghdasaryan
says.

In the opinion of the chairs of the `Investigating Journalists’ and
`Association for Sustainable Human Development’ Edik Baghdasaryan and Karine
Danilelyan, a separate article of the Constitution should state that the
Mayor is an elective official. `Details can be regulated by the law’, Karine
Danielyan says.

There is an opinion that if Ervand Zakharyan were elected by the people and
not by the President, there would have been no problems with the building up
and the residents would not have remained without roof, the green
plantations wouldn’t have been cut down and Yerevan would have remained a
harmonic city. The reviewed Constitution contains an article, which, in
Karine Danielyan’s opinion, can be come disastrous for Armenia. It article
says, `The right of property of foreign citizens and people without
citizenship can be provided by the law’. `One day residents of the Ararat
valley can wake up to find out that the valley belongs to an oligarch. After
his descendants will inherit it or sell it to a Turk or Persian. According
to Karine Danielyan, this clause would be admissible with the operating
clause of dual citizenship, when a foreign citizen would be subordinate to
the Armenian laws.

Lena Badeyan