Yerevan mayor Karen Karapetyan has applied for resignation. People started to discuss this issue shortly after publication of this news. The news was announced on Monday only because during those days a delegation of francophone mayors was paying a visit to Armenia to take part in the general meeting of the international association of francophone mayors. The mayor of Yerevan had an official meeting with this delegation, and if they would announce about the resignation before that, it would turn out that they were met by a mayor who was not on his duties officially anymore. People were speaking several scenarios about this unpredictable resignation. There were rumors that Karen Karapetyan was thinking of resigning long before that too. People also say that it was not by chance that just before the resignation the head of the ULP Gurgen Arsenyan made a criticizing speech against Karen Karapetyan as definitely he had been informed of his resignation. One of the possible scenarios of this resignation is connected with the visit of the Armenian president to Moscow and certain agreements with the Russian authorities concerning inner political processes in Armenia. This issue concerns whether the PA should stay in the coalition or no in the context of the possibility of the second president’s return to active politics. The mayor of Yerevan was not included in the delegation headed by the president of Armenia. One week before the resignation we publiushed information that if the PA left the coalition, it would be followed by resignation of a number of officials backed by Robert Kocharyan. The list of these people includes the mayor of Yerevan, NA speaker Hovik Abrahamyan and deputy PM Armen Gevorgyan. It is not excluded that the mayor’s resignation is the beginning of this scenario. There are also opinions that following this resignation even the PA may not resign from the coalition and may announce about endorsing Serzh Sargsyan’s candidacy during the presidential election 2013. There is also another opinion about the mayor’s resignation, according to which the reason is the mayor’s policy, which generated the complaints of the people of Yerevan (specifically, the ban on street trade and the extraction of street boutiques). According to this scenario, even though these activities were done in agreement with the authorities, meanwhile those were criticized in the media to stimulate the mayor’s resignation. This scenario does not seem to be real because the resignation was done very fast, in several hours following the president’s return from Moscow, when Karen Karapetyan was still hosting the mentioned delegation. Soon the reasons will be found out and they may say that the mayor resigned in order to move to another job. Even more, it is more realistic in consideration of the information we published two weeks ago, according to which Karen Karapetyan had been offered two good positions in Moscow to work either in the Moscow Power Stations Netwrok company (GazProm is one of the founders) or GazProm Eenergo company. There were also rumors that the director of ArmRusGazArd company Vardan Harutyunyan was going to be dismissed from his position too, who was appointed in that position following Karapetyan’s appointment as mayor and is considered to be his follower. These seem to be real scenarios also in consideration of the fact that the director of this company could be Armenian only if this person is Karen Karapetyan. However, he announced that even after resigning from the mayor’s position he would not take that position back again. As for the new mayor, definitely and also due to technical reasons this position will be assigned to deputy mayor Taron Margaryan. There are no other names from the list of the city council members who could be a possible candidate for the mayor’s position.
