Until now, the “Justice” alliance was representing president of the National Democratic Political Party (ADPP) Shavarsh Kocharyan as member of the European Council delegation. However, when Shavarsh Kocharyan started defending the constitutional amendments draft (proposed by the coalition) in Armenia and internationally, it was then that relations between ADPP members and alliance members changed. Now it is time to “count the chicks” (as they say in Armenian which means to see the results). Before the January session of the European Council, President of the National Assembly of Armenia Arthur Baghdasaryan has already applied to the groups and group leaders in the parliament in order to present their representative for the Armenian delegation in the European Council. Yesterday, the alliance (in particular its leader Stepan Demirchyan), made a decision to “punish”, if you will, Shavarsh Kocharyan. From now on, the “Justice” alliance is no longer going to represent Shavarsh Kocharyan as a member of the European Council’s Armenian delegation, but rather Stepan Demirchyan.
According to our sources, members of the alliance had proposed Shavarsh Kocharyan to personally resign just a couple of days before this. The same proposal was made by the alliance members during the session which took place yesterday. However, Sh. Kocharyan refused to accept his colleagues’ proposal and demanded to be removed by votes. During the session yesterday, the nine deputies present at the “Justice” alliance voted in favor of Stepan Demirchyan to be the representative for the Armenian delegation in the European Council. “Shavarsh Kocharyan did not participate in the vote and did not make any objections,” said chief news correspondent for the “Justice” alliance Ruzanna Khachatryan. But Ruzanna Khachatryan did not say anything as to whether or not the decision made by the group corresponded to Shavarsh Kocharyan’s decision during the vote. “I only know about the decision made by the alliance,” said Khachatryan a couple of times. According to Mrs. Khachatryan, “The “Justice” alliance had received a letter signed by the National Assembly president where it was proposed to represent a member of our alliance in the European Council. That issue was discussed and the members decided to represent president of the alliance Stepan Demirchyan. In response to the journalists’ question as to whether or not Shavarsh Kocharyan had done a good job until now, member of the “Justice” alliance and the ADPP Grigor Harutyunyan said: “We have not evaluated the job done by Shavarsh Kocharyan, but we believe that Stepan Demirchyan will do a better job.”
How does Shavarsh Kocharyan look at all this? As he went out after the session, he only made one announcement and refused to answer to the questions of the waiting journalists. “That is the right of a fraction of the members. In this case, I don’t intend on comparing anything,” he said calmly. However, Shavarsh Kocharyan is of the opinion that by not representing him in the European Council, the “Justice” alliance and the opposition as a whole are losing a lot of things. “The problem is that we lost the following positions in the European Council thanks to this decision: first, we are no longer a monitoring member. The opposition and Armenia lost that. Secondly, we lost the position of vice president of the sub-committee of the Cultural Inheritance Congress. We can no longer make speeches about democracy and demography. There are different committees within the European Council and one of them is the Health committee. I represent that committee as an observer and we lost that too,” said Sh. Kocharyan as he reflected upon the losses of the opposition and the achievements during the time when he was the representative. Of course, the president of ADPP also stated that anyone can achieve what he has achieved; however, it is a matter of time even if the person does tremendous work. “So, we get the following question: do those losses need to be based on something?” asked Mr. Kocharyan and said that the only thing that can be based is the incompatibility of the decisions made by the alliance and the political party regarding the constitutional amendments referendum. According to Shavarsh Kocharyan, the “Justice” alliance had to respond to the “positive steps taken during the Strasburg congress after the first speech about the constitutional amendments”, after which the opposition had to continue improving the draft and helping it reach the level needed. Shavarsh Kocharyan also commented on the post-referendum activities carried out by the opposition during the session yesterday: “Unfortunately, the society was not ready for this and the oppositionists did not have enough resources to control everything and reveal the fraud. Besides that, they didn’t have the resource to start a revolution on referendum day. This was very simple and predictable. We found ourselves in the following situation: the people were even more disappointed, lost hope, the opposition was weak and as a result of all this, the regime was stronger,” said Kocharyan in regard to the constitutional amendments and added that he understands the psychology of his colleagues. In order for others to understand the steps taken by the members of the “Justice” alliance, Shavarsh Kocharyan told a story: “A man is sitting on a tree and cutting the branch he is sitting on with a saw. The other says: “What are you doing? You will fall.” The man continues to cut the branch with the saw, falls down and then says to the one giving him advice. “Damn, you are a witch”. You get the impression that the ADPP is in this same situation,” said Shavarsh Kocharyan as he concluded his speech with an imaginative and profound little story and quickly went to his office without answering the journalists’ questions.
In contrast to the ADPP, the other political parties have not changed their representatives for the Armenian delegation in the European Council.