Hayk Marutyan, the former mayor of Yerevan, will participate in the Yerevan Council of Elders elections to be held on September 17, as it was announced today, and he will head the pre-election list of the “National Progress” party.
In September of last year, “National Progress” announced that it would participate in the elections of the Yerevan Council of Elders, and its candidate for mayor will be Hayk Grigoryan, a member of the board. Why did the party change its mind, and why did they prefer Hayk Marutyan? In response to this question, Hayk Grigoryan told Аravot.am that direct cooperation was established.
It is assumed that they calculated that the party with Marutyan’s candidacy will gather more votes than Grigoryan’s, especially since this party still needs to overcome the 1% threshold in 2018. In response to this observation, Grigoryan said: “That is not the meaning of cooperation. The meaning of cooperation is to unite those two forces, groups, which will naturally bring more votes. In other words, we calculate that the cooperation will provide a strong result.”
We reminded Hayk Grigoryan that in one of his interviews, referring to the party’s participation in the Yerevan Council of Elders elections, he said that people are tired, people will not go to the polls if there are former and current, the same faces, being a new face is more beneficial than being old, discredited, but a famous one. Marutyan is, in fact, an old face; he was elected mayor on the list of “My step.” It is difficult to say to what extent he is discredited; at least his dismissal did not go so dignified. “My step” expressed distrust to Marutyan. In this regard, Grigoryan said that Marutyun’s work was artificially interrupted; in that sense, he is not old. “Yes, he had a position, but our general team is not discredited and not old.”
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Marutyan is also known for dividing society into blacks and whites; he announced in 2018: “…there are white forces, and there are black forces, that’s it. I want to officially announce that yes, we are the white forces, and all those who don’t want us to succeed, I can say, are the black forces.”
Marutyun will be reminded about this endlessly; isn’t it dangerous for the party to nominate him as a candidate for mayor? In response to this question, Grigoryan said, “I don’t think it is relevant in today’s context. He made that statement in the context and environment of that time. It has nothing to do with the present time. It is not an ideological dogma; it was a situational statement.”
Nelly BABAYAN
