Nina Iskandaryan
Main speakers:
Karen Bakoyan – Head of the Division of Coordination of Local Self Governance Affairs at the Ministry for Territorial Administration;
Edgar Ghazaryan – Marzpet (Governor) of Vayoz Dzor;
Armen Galstyan –Deputy Director of International Center for Human Development (ICHD);
Moderator: Luisa Ayvazyan, Civic Program Coordinator, NDI
Armen Galstyan was the first to present his opinion. Speaking from the perspective of a civil society activist, Mr. Galstyan concentrated on the work that his organization, ICHD, has been doing to build the capacity of Community Councils, bodies which should, in theory, be the key players in local self-government. According to Galstyan, the main issue is that the heads and members of the community councils need to realize that the law puts the power in their hands. They need to become pro-active and take the lead in decision-making on local level. Galstyan also pointed out the absence of specific regulations which would permit community councils to improve performance. As steps towards achieving this goal, Galstyan described various NGO-led internationally funded initiatives to teach community council members to engage in budget planning, inclusive policy-making etc.
The recently appointed governor Edgar Ghazaryan was the second speaker. He pointed out that local self-government in Armenia recently celebrated its 16th birthday; according to him, the main achievement of the last one and a half decades is that the system has truly formed. He also admitted that there are still a lot of problems awaiting solution, of which the first one, according to him, is the ability of local governments to deliver high quality civil services. Unfortunately many of the communities are passive or inefficient to objective reasons, such as financial difficulties. One of the ways to overcome this, in Mr. Ghazaryan's opinion, is the merging and enlargement of communities, a government program yet to be realized. The second important issue to be addressed to is the decentralization of the power from central authorities to local level. Finally, the third issue is increasing the participation of citizens in local administration. Due to Soviet legacy in this field, people are not quite used to managing community affairs, however, it is in everybody’s interest to improve this situation, and many hopes are vested in the young generation.
The third speaker, Karen Bakoyan from the Ministry of Territorial Administration, talked about recent crucial reforms in the sphere of local governance. He argued that Yerevan has been a community since 2009 and its management and infrastructure have improved as a result. He also stressed that under recent amendments to the law on local self-government, all citizens aged 16 or older have the right to participate in local governance, and that efforts to boost participation will be made in the near future. Mr. Bakoyan also said that the first two pilot projects of community enlargement would be launched in 2013.
Reactions to the three speeches were very active. The most heated debate centered around the enlargement project. The audience raised a lot of questions: is there a target number of communities that the MTA wants to end up with, which criteria are taken into account when merging communities, when is the deadline of this reform, and won’t small communities become even worse off as a result? Participants asked the public officials to evaluate the work of international organizations and a wide range of NGOs in the field. Inputs from the audience sparked a discussion concerning the issue of low participation in local governance. Everybody agreed that the lack of a culture of self-government was the key to most problems, and that the main efforts need to be focused on helping local residents to take charge of local affairs.