Epress.am News from Armenia
The Council of Elders of Armenia's second largest city of Gyumri rejected on Tuesday a petition from a local opposition party, GALA, to deprive Levon Sargsyan, the younger brother of Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan and a lecturer at the Yerevan State University, of his title of Gyumri honorary citizen.
During the discussion, Gyumri mayor Samvel Balasanyan condemned the proposal, insisting that “such an inappropriate attitude towards a professor” was unacceptable. GALA representative, president of the Gyumri-based Asparez Journalists' Club Levon Barseghyan, in turn, countered that Levon Sargsyan “does not have sufficient qualities to be worthy of such a title.”
Armine Darbinyan, one of the initiators of the proposal, for her part, claimed that it was only thanks to being the brother of the president that Sargsyan had been awarded the title in the first place. “Levon Sargsyan's 'Pyunik' fund is a den of corruption which manages to collect millions of dollars from people who feel obligated to donate a share of their property to the so-called charitable fund belonging to Serzh Sargsyan's brother,” the GALA member added.
Recall, in March 2016, Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan also awarded his younger brother the First Degree Medal of Services Rendered to Fatherland.