Gurgen Gasparyan, the leader of the PAP faction leader and a member of the Yerevan City Council, hopes that he will see Taron Margaryan more mature holding the mayor’s office.
Today before the Yerevan city mayor election results would be summarized at the Yerevan City Hall, Aravot.am inquired from Gurgen Gasparyan, the leader of the PAP faction leader and a member of the Yerevan City Council, what he thought about Taron Margaryan, the mayor candidate.
“He has been the deputy mayor of Yerevan and I cannot say anything bad about him. The work of the departments managed by Mr. Margaryan has been normal. It seems to me that we will see him more mature holding the mayor’s office.”
Referring to previous mayor Karen Karapetyan’s activities, G. Gasparyan said that their faction had some provisions, in particular on the issue of booth dismantlement, “In our opinion, a project condition was violated – the city council has a development project, which didn’t stipulate the dismantlement works, I mean, it was explicitly mentioned there that the booths would be updated, moved and compensated. We all know that PAP, represented by Gagik Tsarukyan, has always been for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises and has stood for them. 2800 booths is a big number for the population of Yerevan, for the small and medium-sized enterprises, and we just cannot allow the dismantlement of those booths, especially under these harsh social conditions.”
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In response to the question of Aravot.am whether he had ever expressed concerns about tens of big supermarkets in the capital city that directly destroyed the small and medium-sized businesses, Mr. Gasparyan said, “If today booth owners claim that they economically exist in this field, then they are demanded.”
In response to our question “do you really think that a booth owner can oppose Samvel Alexanyan?”, Gurgen Gasparyan said, “If there was an objection, if any of the city administration functions aroused the people’s displeasure, we referred to that issue and after deeply examining it expressed our idea, as I haven’t gone deep into this issue, I haven’t examined it, I cannot say.”
Responding to another question of Aravot.am “perhaps defending the booth owners is a pre-election step taken for the upcoming election”, Mr. Gasparyan said, “No, the election has nothing to do with this – everybody knows that PAP doesn’t take on any proceeding that is not in the interest of the people. We see a bad action, we see a bad thing, but we stand for the right and good thing. I have never heard a booth owner to protest and say that his booth is next to a supermarket and he cannot work.”
As for the possibility that Taron Margaryan would continue K. Karapetyan’s work of dismantling booths, G. Gasparyan said that according to the initial talks, Taron Margaryan would stop that process.
Lusine Budaghyan
