Minister of Defense Serj Sargsyan was elected president of the Yerevan State University board yesterday during board elections. A total of 70 out of the 72 people participated in the elections and only 4 of them did not vote in favor of Serj Sargsyan. Former rector of the Yerevan State University Radik Martirosyan was also one of the candidates who counted himself out in the beginning of the board session.
There were rumors going around yesterday that president of the Armenian Republican Party and Prime Minister Andranik Markaryan and S. Sargsyan had a debate. According to the rumors, Andranik Markaryan was against electing S. Sargsyan as board president because Markaryan had already promised Armenian Republican Party deputy Hranush Hakobyan that position. The government’s press department denied those rumors and just referred to them as lies. In response to our question as to how A. Markaryan reacted to this, they said: “He was very kind. Everything was fine.”
Hranush Hakobyan also denied the abovementioned rumors.
“It’s simply ridiculous.”
We asked H. Hakobyan whether or not the Prime Minister had made such a promise. She said:
“No, the Prime Minister has not made any offer. Serj Sargsyan himself offered the position, but I refused. Judging from how tense the students are at the university, I advised Serj Sargsyan to put up his nomination.” According to the deputy, the university needs someone to “calm it down”.
“From what I understood, electing a university board president was all about deciding who is going to be the future university rector. The university needed someone in control and that’s why I called on everyone to vote for Serj Sargsyan. Believe me when I say that the university kind of calmed down after Serj Sargsyan got elected,” said MP H. Hakobyan. She also said that it was much easier to elect a board president in other institutions because they already had a “chief”.
“The board president has a very symbolic role. Many consider being the president of the board as honorable, but all the president does is lead the sessions. That is why it would be nice to have control in the board so that everyone would do his or her job and not go into further details. For now, Serj Sargsyan was the right choice,” said Hranush Hakobyan. “I was the activist and the one that took the initiative of putting up Serj Sargsyan’s candidacy.”
As for the rumors, H. Hakobyan said:
“Those are just lies because the prime minister was not the one to discuss my candidacy or advise me to put up my candidacy. Serj Sargsyan was the one who advised me as a university student. Despite everything, I think that it was right to elect Serj; the students also agreed. What’s the matter? The university was in panic for two months; now they can be more relaxed and elect a new rector. As a matter of fact, Serj Sargsyan commented about this in the beginning of his speech-‘I will not stand in the way of the new rector and will make it so he does his job the way it should be done.”
H. Hakobyan said the following to the students:
“We shouldn’t leave everything up to the board president and not do anything. Perhaps this is an extra burden on Serj Sargsyan’s shoulders, but the university made the right decision.”