Valerie-Ashkhen Gortsunyan, a French businessman and the former owner of the company Café de Paris, still waits for the fulfillment of the promise made to her by Mayor Taron Margaryan that the open-air part of Café de Paris will be reopened. “Mr. Mayor personally said that the summer part of Café de Paris will be opened two months after cleaning up Abovyan Street, but after rather long negotiations he permitted to open only the part beside the wall and the street part is not permitted yet. I trusted his word and I am surprised that the mayor’s word may be worthless,” Ms. Gortsunyan said during a conversation with www.aravot.am. Finding out that the mayor had permitted the brother of Gagik Beglaryan, the Minister of Transport and Communication, to open a café in the very place where the dismantled booths had been, Ms. Gortsunyan became more disappointed, “A naïve Diaspora Armenian thinks that the mayor should respect his word. It is hard for me to say whether the mayor of Yerevan is free to make decisions or whether oligarchs allow him to act freely for their political interests, but seeing the Armenian reality, it is hard for me to believe that he is the right mayor or the mayor who defends the interests of the city and its citizens.”
Arpine SIMONYAN
