The Yerevan City Council election campaign commenced on April 7 and will end on May 3. At our request, Zhanna Andreasyan, a sociologist and a Yerevan State University professor, assessed the capacities of the parties as of the outset of the election campaign during a conversation with www.aravot.am. The sociologist stated: “I think city council elections, as a phenomenon, should be attached more importance to in our country, since those are elections at such a level that they basically allow raising issues concerning the very community and solving them. Unfortunately, their social significance is not acknowledged in our country; those are always subordinated to national elections, whereas they have a very important impact on individuals. I would like the problems of the city to be prioritized. In
this sense, we should consider who really has the capacity to deal with those problems.” We cleared up which of the parties that had applied for participation had that capacity. Z. Andreasyan replied: “The first is the incumbent mayor’s team. They were offered a real opportunity to deal with problems, raise them, and solve them. I was very happy when I saw the Hello Yerevan Coalition try to organize the cleaning of yards in communities. I understand that this testifies to their willingness to conduct their campaign in the same spirit. It seems that some of the parties start to comprehend that one should show his strategy with real steps. The incumbent mayor and his team are more capable of showing that work. However, I see the willingness to take the path of doing work among the others too, not to say what they are going to do, but to do that.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
