Last week, the “Constitutional Rights Union” (CRU) party dispersed a message, stating that the “New Times” party will participate in the process of weakening the CRU and stopping the “Iravunk” paper from publishing articles about the party and that party leader Aram Karapetyan’s activities help the authorities get what they want”. A day before dispersing the message, Aram Karapetyan told “168 Hours” that after taking a look at the lists of the CRU delegates and members of the Talin branch of the “New Times” party, they saw that 51 last names coincide-in other words, 51 of the CRU delegates were actually members of the “New Times” party.
“We simply took a look at the last names and saw that 51 of them coincided. Hrant Khachatryan and I did talk about that. But I haven’t given a written response to the party yet because we still have to clear many things up. The last name can be the same, but they may be different people. I confirm that there were 51 last names that coincided and I have told them that,” said A. Karapetyan to “168 Hours”.
As for the secret recording of the CRU-the result of the activities of the party members which was revealed a couple of months ago-clarifying that the former deputy leader of the CRU Hayk Babukhanyan sold the spots of the CRU during the previous Armenian parliamentary elections and that, according to some rumors, 2003 Armenian presidential candidate A. Karapetyan received less votes, Karapetyan said that they need to collect all the evidence because “the court won’t approve all that with just one recording.
“If I get involved in this, I have to get involved completely. I don’t know whether I will or not. But I know one thing for sure: the percentages were low,” said the “New Times” party leader to “168 Hours”. In any case, after the abovementioned announcement made by the CRU, the press department of the “New Times” party made the following announcement:
“It’s evident that the CRU went down due to the ambitions, shady business and the people who played with 15 years of friendship. We inform that the leader of the “New Times” party has only given a response to the letter sent by the real leader of the CRU party Hrant Khachatryan who, in contrast to others, was reelected leader of the party with 100% of votes. The “New Times” party leader responded to Khachatryan’s letter and told the truth-there really were 51 “New Times” party members from the former Talin branch who had participated in the scandalous CRU summit as CRU delegates,” as stated in the message dispersed by the “New Times” party, which also states that it “remonstrates” the people who speculate the name of the “New Times” leader based on the current situation to worry about the problems of their own parties and not blame everyone for the contradictions. “After all, politics is not about going along with intrigues; it’s something else…” said the “New Times” party leader as a closing statement of his letter.
P.S. The first instance court of the Central and Nork-Marash communities rejected the appeal of the former CRU administration members against the new leaders of the party. The defendants, who were on former CRU leader H. Khachatryan’s side, demanded the court to recognize last year’s CRU presidential elections during the 17th summit as invalid. It was during that summit that Hayk Babukhanyan was elected leader of the party instead of Hrant Khachatryan. According to “Azatutyun” radio station, the defendants believe that the verdict was a political order. Former member of the CRU administration Karen Vartanyan said that the court’s verdict was reached “by the powers that were behind the overturn of the party”.
