The secretary of “Justice” alliance Viktor Dallakyan jokes about the
people, who announce, that the loss of Ruzan Khachatryan, who is a
member of the party board, in the elections for the position of the
Centre Community head, was the loss of “Justice” alliance.
“In 2003 “Justice” filled the second place in the National Assembly
elections in the Centre Community. And those people, who make these
kinds of announcements, cannot get votes even in their buildings”,-
said V.Dallakyan. Actually, according to V.Dallakyan, even Galust
Sahakyan couldn’t get votes in his building, Manuk Gasparyan couldn’t
do that either, whose candidate was very close to win the elections in
Kanaker-Zeitun district on September 18.
“I had foreseen, that Ruzan Khachatryan would not be elected, and I was
right. In Armenia people don’t think, that a woman can be a good head
of community and that she can “organize scavenge”. And as for being a
political leader, even those parties, which were in the alliance and
announced, that were going to support her did not do anything at all.
Even the leader of Ruzan Khachatryan’s party didn’t go to the meetings
with people. Ruzan wasn’t even protected by her leader. It is good for
them to make promises to the people, but they must keep their promises
later. For example, I stood by Arayik Kotanjyan’s side in Zeitun and
met people four times a day, and there was no exception. This means,
that either they didn’t care about these elections or they were sure
that she would not be elected. Probably this was just an action for
them, and nobody explained to her, that she didn’t have to enter this
field. If she entered this field for getting public acknowledgement,
this is ok. And if she entered this field with the hope to win, she
didn’t have to, because she had no chances to win. And probably her
competitor was happy to learn that he had at least one competitor and
wasn’t the only candidate in those elections”,-says Manuk Gasparyan.
Ruzan Khachatryan thought, that the meeting with people from the
community on the last day of the campaign near the Matenadaran was very
important, and according to R.Khachatryan all the leaders of the
“Justice” alliance, who had nominated her as a candidate, had to be
there, including Stepan Demrichyan, who hadn’t been even involved in
the campaign before. But they didn’t support her there either. V.
Dallakyan doesn’t think the announcements, about the leaders supporting
Ruzan Khachatryan was correct. “I don’t see any problem in having
National Assembly members participate in the meetings instead of the
leader of the alliance himself. For example, Tatul Manaseryan and
Shavarsh Kocharyan participated in the campaign”. And member of
“Republican” political party board Suren Surenyants said during our
conversation, that Aram Sargsyan and the other representatives of their
party were not there because of some technical problems-they had been
busy with the organizing the forthcoming conference and they had to
hold a meeting of the regional organization in Artashat that day. “We
had already arranged the time of that meeting and had to be in Artashat
and couldn’t change it. We found out about the meeting long after we
had already set the date and the time of our conference.” As for the
opinions, that “Justice” had promised R. Khachatryan to support, but
later failed to do that, etc, S.Surenyants said: “I don’t think that we
left her hanging from thin air on purpose by not supporting her. That
is not the case. We had announced to the public many times, that we
would protect the decision of the alliance referring to this issue. As
for the results, it is really a topic for serious discussions among the
representatives of the opposition. I don’t think, that only
R.Khachatryan or someone else was responsible for those elections.
There were interferences in the election process and also new violation
technologies were used, which must be discussed by opposition
representatives”. Surenyants also said, that the authorities proved
once again, that they’re not able to organize elections, because what
happened in the Centre cannot be called an election. “It is clear for
me, that the authorities appointed a person there, who would be
responsible for the forthcoming referendum. It seems to me, that the
authorities have distributed the territories between some people with
the purpose to organize the referendum however they see fit. In a word,
these elections proved the opinion of “Republican” party, that the
authorities have “closed” the route for political competition, which is
called election, and the only way out of this situation is to start a
democratic revolution”,-said Mr. Surenyants.
We reminded Mr Surenyans, that R.Khachatryan had announced, that her
goal hadn’t been to obtain the position of the community head, but
rather, she wanted to help the opposition start its activities.
S.Surenyants answered: “I can say only one thing, that the opposition
could work harder and could do better. There are a lot of problems,
which we have to discuss and come to conclusions. The opposition could
be more active in the local government elections. It had to use the
local government elections with the purposes to make the authorities
weaker”. The secretary of the “National Unity” party Alexan Karapetyan
said during our conversation, that a candidate for a position as a
member of community council in the Centre Community Vilen Arevshatyan,
who was a representative of their party’s youth branch, had filled the
first place according to the preliminary information, and the votes he
collected were less than the votes of R. Khachatryan by 1000.