Things are still heated up at the “Constitutional Rights Union” (CRU) party. It all started with the overturn a couple of months ago during the CRU session.
After the overturn, leader of the CRU Hrant Khachatryan announced that he was leaving the political field. Currently, the Khachatryan and Babajanyan wings of the party are debating the issue in court. Khachatryan’s side is debating the legality of the election of the party’s new supreme body. The interesting thing here is that both sides are blaming one another for being “chosen by the authorities”. During a press conference at the “Friday” club on Monday, one of H. Khachatryan’s allies, Karen Vartanyan, said that he believed that the split of the CRU was not an issue for the party, but rather a social issue and even the government should worry over what happened and investigate. Vartanyan also mentioned that there are some suspicions that the party was split by “outside forces”. He didn’t mention any names, but he did say that there are predictions which should be investigated.
“I know for a fact that there were some parties who took advantage of this. This not only concerns the CRU. This is a social issue and it’s important for us to reveal the mechanisms because we know that there is criminality in those mechanisms,” said K. Vartanyan.
Judging from his words, one could come to the conclusion that the court is inclined to reveal everything. However, the party is not planning to challenge the judge at the moment.
“I don’t want to predict the court’s decision. We’ll know soon enough. If there’s some kind of request, that has nothing to do with the judge personally. The court trial will show if there is a request or not,” he said.
K. Vartanyan also mentioned that if the problem isn’t solved in the first instance court, the party is ready to move on to the other instances. But they won’t go to the European Court because, according to them, “if our problem isn’t solved in Armenia, then it definitely won’t be solved abroad”. On the other hand, according to K. Vartanyan, problems are not only solved in courts. What he means is that the problem can also be solved by informing the public. But does the court appeal of the Khachatryan wing of the CRU mean that Hrant Khachatryan has regretted announcing that he was going to leave the political field? In response to this, Vartanyan said:
“There is something called shock. Khachatryan was in shock before and 20-25 days after the session. His close friend had betrayed him. The man whom Khachatryan had made him who he is and saw as his successor; the man with whom he had worked so hard and put in a lot of effort betrayed him. If two friends are close and one of them betrays the other, the betrayal shocks that person. After all, they’re not robots; they’re human beings.”
According to him, Hrant Khachatryan declared that he was leaving politics because he was in shock. As for the opinions heard that it would have been better if the party went to the Constitutional Court with this, K. Vartanyan says that the Constitutional Court has nothing to do with it.
“We’re talking about the violations of the heads of the supreme bodies of the party. What does this have to do with the Constitutional Court? The Constitutional Court discusses more serious issues. I mean, those issues make sense,” he said.
Vartanyan expects the people to “think about this”.
“How is all of this going on? This is showing that something is going on, right? That’s what has to change our views about the future. If man’s mind changes, his actions and behavior change…Everything starts from that. We keep saying ‘it’ll change, it’ll change’. If it doesn’t, then that’s a different issue. We’re saying ‘people, something has happened and we would like for you to pay attention to what has happened’. We’re not like Tigran Karapetyan; we can’t have such an influence on people in order to change the way they think.”
As for electoral violations that are being debated, Karen Vartanyan mentioned that there were minors and members of the “New Times” party among the delegates.
“For example, the same group from Talin goes to the CRU and says ‘we’re your allies, accept us as members, organizer Zhirair Mkrtchyan’. Mkrtchyan’s son takes the list, goes to the “New Times” party and says ‘I’m one of your allies, this is my list and it appears that I’m the organizer’. The “New Times” party didn’t know about this. We warned leader of the party Aram Karapetyan. Then we checked the lists and apparently there were 50 members from the “New Times” party on the list of voters present during the session,” mentioned Vartanyan.
He added that in his opinion, the question and answer session during the trial “served as enough basis” for the judge to solve the problem “by bringing back the constitutional orders to the CRU” and invalidating the results of the party’s supreme body elections. During an interview with leader of the “New Times” party Aram Karapetyan, he mentioned that they had simply “looked” at the list and saw that 51 last names were the last names of members of his party.
“They can check everything, but we have closed the office in Talin and opened a new one. We simply looked at the list and saw that 51 last names were the last names of “New Times” party members. Hrant Khachatryan and I did have a conversation about this. But I haven’t responded to their letter because many things have to be clarified because it doesn’t matter if the last name is the same; perhaps it’s a different person. But I confirm that there were 51 last names on the list and I have told the CRU that too,” said A. Karapetyan.