In the opinion of the current mayor of Armenia, member of the RPA Gagik Beglaryan the methods of election race of the coalition parties and the opposition are the same. According to him the evidence of that is the incident occurred in Avan among the republicans and Kanaker-Zeytun communities of Yerevan among the RPA and Prosperous Armenia members.
“There is no single difference; all of them are fighting for votes,” says Beglaryan, who was yesterday in Malatia-Sebatsia community. During the meeting in the mentioned community the head of Malatia-Sebastia community Davit Ohanyan, MP of the district Samvel Alexanyan, head of Avan community Taron Margaryan. During the meeting a karate master Gor Vardanyan was also present. When speaking of the law on Yerevan Gagik Beglaryan mentioned, “The law enables each citizen to oversee the activities of the community. There are political forces, which claim that they will be overseeing the process. The controller of the process should be the citizen. The Constitution enables that. We all know that after May 31 there won’t be any community heads and there will be just a mayor. It means that there won’t be the previous tension and contradictions. The election of heads of communities is sometimes very controversial but the mayor will be elected for a four-year term. Believe me dear people, you will be the ones to evaluate the work of the mayor and the heads of communities. This sphere has been developed in the whole world. It reached the level that the people never politicize the election of the mayor. We will also try not to politicize that. We will be electing the party, those people, who will be able to manage the city.” He later promised that starting from June 1 there will be no street or yard in Armenia that wouldn’t be asphalted or lit. The complaints were that the neighboring yards were being asphalted and others not. Beglaryan answered, “There is no concrete; people don’t manage to do it due to the pouring rain season.” When speaking of the green areas of Yerevan and those political parties, which plant trees during their campaigns Beglaryan said, “I don’t know why but during campaigns some parties plant trees but we don’t have irrigation network. Now we are undertaking large-scale irrigation network construction. In spring we will complete these works but in the fall we will all plant trees so that the trees really grow and serve our generations. We plant 150000 trees every year but hardly 1000 grow. People squander their funds. We will invest our money in the construction of the irrigation system and only in fall we will plant trees.” After the meeting we asked Beglaryan about the incidents of the recent days. To our question what Beglaryan thinks about the incidents in Avan and Kanaker-Zeytun and what steps the city council undertakes to resolve the tension he said:
– Trust me, the events that take place, are not ordered from any headquarters. These are the people, who offer “bear services.” It means we have to try to punish the ones, who head has been broken and the ones, who broke that head. We shouldn’t make them heroes. If we keep on working in that direction I think everything will be set in its place.
– As a governing party representatives, don’t you think that the government can at least prevent those cases? Don’t you think that the reason of this is the impunity?
– The worst thing is that there are provocative cases as well. Trust me there are concrete mechanisms that are applied to condemn the culprits. I can bring up concrete facts but at present nobody is going to believe in those. These steps are concretely taken for black PR. The only mechanism of fight against it is the following. Let us not make either the beater of the victim heroes. The victim becomes a hero as he says he has done it for the people. And the one, who beats, tells the candidate that he had made efforts for him. Therefore, both the beater and the victim should be punished. Now we have over 1000 people gathered here but they don’t create any conflicts because there is no person here, who’d instigate these people to conflict. If you pay attention you will notice that during the past 7 years both the beaters and the victims are the same.
– Did you, as a current Yerevan mayor, ask the community head of Kanaker-Zeitun Arayik Kotanjyan what had happened in his community a day ago? And why did he participate in that conflict?
– Arayik Kotanjyan wasn’t involved in that incident.
– But his personal car was at the site and the photo is in newspapers.
– Are you trying to say that the car was involved? Kotanjyan personally wasn’t there (yesterday the latter told the A1+ that he was present at the conflict – by L.S.).
– After the events in Avan the newspapers publicized the photos of the young people, who threw rocks at the female activists of the ANC. Have you tried to find out the ones, who tried to offer “bear service” to you?
– We found it out and these people will be punished by all means. For that purpose I also request these women not to provoke the crazy people so that they don’t throw rocks at them. Trust me the person, who can hit a woman with a rock, is mentally sick. But the woman in her turn should behave the way to avoid being attacked. So please, let us criticize both of the sides. The one, who hit the woman, can be minimum qualified as mentally sick. But you are a woman. How many times have you been hit by a stone in your lifetime? Has there been anything like that? No. That’s it. So those political parties, which stimulate these women, who we love, respect and consider our sisters, should keep them away from hazard because there will always be mentally sick people, who cannot orient. And this provocation works against them.
– If it is logical to find certain explanation about the conflict between the opposition and government parties then it’s really unclear why conflicts are arisen between the two governmental parties.
– There is no difference at all. Today everybody fights for their votes. The same struggle exists within the coalition. We should reach a level when the election race would proceed in a civilized manner. You see, in Avan the opposition screams that everything is against them but as you witnessed the same tension exists within the governmental coalition. Each of us should be able to tell our subordinates and the ones, who campaign on our behalf that they should organize a civilized and police campaigns and that their “bear service” is not going to be glorified by us. Vice versa, the relevant bodies will punish them for that.