“Yerevan is a community. The methods of forming the local government and municipal institutions are defined by the law. Also, the law can also define that the mayor of Yerevan can be elected directly or indirectly” as stated in Article 108 of the RA Constitution. Based on this constitutional amendment, the government made a decision to found a commission to create a Code for Yerevan. The commission discussed two new versions of the administration model for Yerevan. The first one was created by the commission.
“At first, the commission decided that the city should keep its traditions and everything that is good for the capital” says Vache Terteryan, member of the commission and deputy to the RA regional management minister, “With that in mind, we decided that community municipalities should stay the same, even though we could make some administrative changes in those communities, according to which the mayor should be elected by public vote, the municipality council should be elected on a majority basis and the mayor should be elected among and by members of the community council. As for the communities, the community heads should be elected directly, from and by the members of the community council. According to another version, the community heads should be appointed by the mayor”.
This would fulfill the constitutional requirement, thus the mayor would be elected, but not by public vote, but by the municipality. Former general architect of Yerevan, Narek Sargsyan suggested another version too. According to this second version, Yerevan should be a big agglomeration of communities. In other words, these 12 communities of Yerevan should become small cities with their own municipalities and should have their mayors and councils elected by public vote. According to this version, in these small cities the mayors should be in charge of solving the problems of their own small cities. However, this agglomeration may bring up other problems, which will be common issues for all the units. Those problems should be solved jointly. Such problems should be assigned to another governmental body, such as the regional management boards and the ministry of regional administration. This model is like the model that we have in village communities, according to which village communities have their own municipalities, but the regional management boards work with them and solve problems there. In this case the governmental administration body should only control and not be in charge of making decisions.
“In fact, this is the best model”, says Narek Sargsyan, “Currently, community municipalities are not entitled to solve the problems of their citizens. Most of those functions are entitled to the mayor. In order to solve problems, citizens have to deal with both the community municipalities and with the municipality. 80% of those problems are local and should be solved at the local level. According to our model, citizens will elect their own mayor and will know that the only responsible body for their problems is the municipality staff that they have elected. In this case, the voters will depend on their mayors, thus the mayors will be held accountable. The mayors that are appointed are not that accountable to citizens. The same argument concerns the other version too, thus the mayor elected by councils will be accountable to 30-40 councils only”.
Most of the community heads agree with the model proposed by Narek Sargsyan. They say that at the present, they don’t have a right to solve global problems in their communities, give lands, permission for construction, prohibit anything, be fully responsible for those problems, etc. Besides that, if the municipality decides that some constructions fully comply with city construction norms, the community municipality cannot protest or prohibit that. In other words, the community heads that are elected by people are not entitled to solve many problems.
“If they get more responsibilities, just like the mayor, it will not be right to call them community heads. Why should Erebuni be a community with 220.000 citizens and Artik be a city with its 20.000 citizens? Besides that, the borders of Yerevan were mapped at a rapid pace. Nubarashen cannot be a part of Yerevan. During the Soviet era, the borders of Yerevan were enlarged in order to get permission from Moscow to build the underground. They were right to do that, I don’t argue. However, now we have to find another model for effective administration” says Narek Sargsyan.
“Narek Sargsyan says Yerevan is not one community, but I think it is. Yerevan is not divided into parts; there are simply virtual lines drawn to make management effective” says V. Terteryan, “I don’t think that people will be satisfied if the function of land distribution is given to the communities. Those who manage to get lands will be happy, while others won’t. I don’t think that people will have fewer problems if those rights are given to the communities. The most important thing is to make sure that the provision of services is at a good level and not exactly who provides the services. In the framework of the version proposed by the commission, there will be distribution of powers. We see that both these versions have vulnerable points. I think we should find the one thing that may balance everything and provide maximum effectiveness”.
The point of the version proposed by the commission that is out in the open is the fact that in their version, the mayor is not elected directly. According to this version, the mayor will be elected by the political majority of the elected community municipality councils. In this case the mayor may be controlled by that group. However, V. Terteryan does not think so, “He can be controlled by them because the law will entitle him to certain rights. No one has proven so far that the institutions elected on minority basis are more effective than those elected on majority basis. However, maybe in some past phases, some models were not successful in some countries. As for Yerevan, we have come up with a recommendation to elect councils on minority basis since it is big enough and covers a big part of the country. The management of this big part of the country should be political. One political party should administer the city of Yerevan because the mayor is more involved with executive work. He should stay far from the political field, but the institution of community councils should be politicized. Generally the politics of European countries are at lower levels and the elections of political parties are at a higher level.”
There is another version for Yerevan administration, which is not discussed out in the open. According to this method, community councils stay the same, but the mayor is elected directly by public vote. However, nobody is in favor of this. They don’t want the mayor to be only held accountable to citizens and govern most of the population of the country. In this case, being a mayor is very close to being a president. Many people see risks and that is the reason why it is not discussed openly. Only the versions proposed by the commission and Narek Sargsyan will be discussed. It seems that the discussions have stopped for a while. The public isn’t discussing this either. Besides that, the political powers have not discussed these two versions yet either. They are definitely waiting for the higher authorities to express their views. Whatever they decide will be advocated by the pro-government political parties and criticized by the opposition.