Immediately after the local elections, Hovsep Simonyan, the defeated ARF candidate for the mayor of Gyumri and the head of the financial and economic department of the Gyumri town hall, stated that his party would not let Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) member Samvel Balasanyan govern single-handedly, it would supervise every step of his, decisions and financial deals he made, in order that Gyumri didn’t suffer from bad governance. The former candidate explained playing the role of supervisor not by the ARF members’ being offended and insulted, but having more than 10 thousand votes of the Gyumri residents behind them. Let us remind that the ARF candidate won 10 281 votes and he didn’t consider this a defeat at all, since, according to him, those were impartial votes, and he didn’t use money, people weren’t taken from their graves and brought to polling stations to vote for him. Anyway, yesterday it came out that the ARF regional organization in Shirak is going to establish a 5-member commission consisting of economists, architects, people from the field of education and other specialists, which will participate in every meeting of the town council, will raise the problems of the town and will make the newly-elected mayor of Gyumri work jointly with the town council for the benefit of the Gyumri residents.

Gevorg Alekyan, an official of the ARF regional committee in Shirak, explained their goal during a conversation with Aravot in the following manner, “After the local elections, at the meetings with our comrades, we decided to establish a political commission, which will participate in all the meetings of the Gyumri town council, will make its proposals, which, in our opinion, are really in the interests of the people, at the initiative of our party’s spine. All that is done to make people understand that there is a political party in the town, in the region, and if our proposals, which are in the interests of the people, are not accepted by the town hall, serious criticism will be made, we will let everyone know, we will tell the people that this proposal has been made in their interest, for them, for the town that belongs to all of us, but, unfortunately, the town authorities do not accept it today.” In response to our question who would be the chairman of the commission, whether it would be former candidate for mayor Hovsep Simonyan, Gevorg Alekyan said, “The commission will surely have a chairman, secretary, records will be made, but since specialists in different fields will be included, every one of them will appear at the council’s meetings in accordance with his/her office, his/her field, will be active in his/her field. You can notice that there are certain drawbacks in kindergartens today, there is a problem with heating – these are minor problems, which can be solved quickly, but they have become fundamental problems, one can asphalt the square in the vicinity of a kindergarten, but have no heating inside. The specialist in education will have his/her say here.”

According to the ARF regional committee official, immediately after establishing the commission, the party’s office will announce visiting days for the residents, will register their complaints and present them to the Gyumri council. “That commission will work like standing committees of the National Assembly – a work schedule will be drawn up and there will be visiting hours. We don’t establish the commission, because our candidate lost to Samvel Balasanyan by votes, although we don’t think it was a defeat, we won a moral victory, and we don’t establish a commission to supervise Samvel Balasanyan, to find some mistakes. I don’t want to draw attention to Samel Balasanyan’s personality, since, in our opinion, he will carry out the council’s decisions, and attending the council’s meetings, we will clearly see what the relationship between the mayor and the council is like. I saw Balasanyan’s speech on TV recently, when he, addressing the then council of Gyumri, tried to convene an auditing group regarding Vardan Ghukasyan’s debts, and when the council voted against his proposal, he said, ‘OK, the next council will come and then we will convene an auditing group.’ I didn’t like it at all, one shouldn’t make a decision on the council’s behalf before time. Balasanyan was not and will not be a problem for us, we take an interest in him insofar as he is the incumbent mayor, and we are generally interested in the work style of the current government of the town,” the official of the ARF regional committee in Shirak explained.

Nune AREVSHATYAN