Mane Tandilian: “As a result of the enlargement, the number of women in the community council members and leadership has dramatically dropped”

At the National Assembly today, during the hot discussions of inter-community unions and a package of draft laws attached, they also touched upon the problem of enlargement, including the problem of women’s representation in the local self-governing bodies. Panorama.am touched upon the issue.

Particularly, Mane Tandilyan from the “Yelq” faction, referring to the issue of involvement of women in intercommunity unions, said:

“We have  men’s clubs in the communities, and the representation of women is quite low. As a result of the enlargement, the number of women in the community has dramatically dropped. It should be stated that if the head of the community is a man, then the next participant in intercommunity associations should be a woman”.

“The draft law on intercommunity unions has many contradictions with the Constitution,” said Artak Zeynalyan from the “Yelq” faction. According to him, this problem should not be solved four years later. “Let’s solve this problem now so that people’s rights will not be violated for four years. The bill says that unification of communities is not a new community, it is not a local self-government, if so, the NA has no right to authorize a body other than a state body to adopt normative legal acts”.

“The government has brought another misfortune, a project contradicts the other, another provision is contrary to the Law on Local Self-Government, and the draft law generally conflicts with sober logic,” Naira Zohrabyan, a member of the Tsarukyan faction in the parliament announced today in referring to the draft law on Inter-Community Unions.

She said that during these two days she has received calls from community leaders who pointed out that this project would destroy the communities that are still unable to come to a stable state as a result of the enlargement. “If this bill is put to the vote, our alliance will naturally vote against it,” she added.

Full text in Armenian