Yesterday it became clear that former member of the Heritage party Vardan Khachatryan had joined the Social Democratic Henchak Party again. Now is a member of the mentioned party. It is worth mentioning that on September 9 night the Heritage party made a decision to exclude three persons from their party, including Khachatryan as well. In the end of October the latter joined the Henchak party. One month later this party made a decision to exclude him from the party with the explanation that according to the bylaws of their party, people having been a member of another national party could join their party minimum in one year after their resignation. During this period neither of the parties made any statements to comment. Several days ago V. Khachatryan told us that the Henchak party had discussed the issue again and granted membership to him. We asked him why he had joined another party after being with the Heritage for 4 years. “I had a feeling of responsibility toward our society. I saw this responsibility in the national organizations and that is the reason why I decided to join the Henchak party,” says V. Khachatryan.
There are rumors that the authorities want to separate this party as well. They have a project targeted at uniting the three traditional parties on a platform in order to establish controllable opposition. The Henchak party of Armenia does not support this goal because it is a member of the ANC. Thus, in order to change the proportion of powers in the ANC they want to make some changes in this party. The head of the Armenian office of the Henchak party Lyudmila Sargsyan and her loyalists are against the mentioned project. Now it seems that they are attempting to take this institution out of Lyudmila Sargsyan’s control. V. Khachatryan will be one of the main implementers of this project. Even there are rumors that during the upcoming session in January the party will appoint a new secretary, and there are rumors that Khachatryan is the candidate for this position. We asked him and he said that he would not try to be appointed in the mentioned position. He simply said that the issue was not in the agenda and was not discussed either. We asked Lyudmila Sargsyan to comment on the mentioned rumors but she refused to say anything.
There are rumors that former deputy minister of defense Vahan Shirkhanyan, who joined this party on March 2 of 2008, may be nominated for this position as well. By the way, the latter did not refute the rumors that their party was going to make Lyudmila Sargsyan resign from the party secretary’s position. “Everything will be clear after the party’s meeting,” he said to journalists. By the way, Mr. Shirkhanyan speaks of the need to establish new opposition and believes that the existing opposition is not capable of doing anything and making change. Yesterday we asked him about this but he said it was not true. “I believe it is impossible to change the power in Armenia through this policy and passive work,” he said.
What should the ANC do to change the power? “I believe in order to consolidate the society to make a change there should be a platform, in which everyone may see his/her future. Up to now there has not been such platform. Do they want change of power for the sake of change of power? I am against this ideology. The change of power should be done for the purpose of making system changes in the country and taking the country out of this swamp,” said Shirkhanyan. The latter says the Henchak party does not discuss the issue of going out of the ANC. “The cooperation with the ANC is done based on the resolution,” said Shirkhanyan. We asked the ANC coordinator Levon Zurabyan about this problem. “If Shirkhanyan considers himself a part of this movement and opposition and has such estimations, it means it is just a self-estimation. We appreciate the self-critics. As for the pre-election platforms, we have Ter-Petrosyan’s platform and the program presented during the mayoral elections as well. These platforms have been worked out by the ANC and Mr. Shirkhanyan has advocated for this program as well. If he doesn’t accept this program now, he should explain why,” said Mr. Zurabyan during our phone conversation.
It is worth mentioning that together with V. Shirkhanyan the former deputy chief of the national security services Gurgen Yeghiazaryan, who became a member of the party board too. We asked what he thinks about the processes in their party. “As far as I know people become member of the Henchak party in the initial organization, but Khachatryan is not a member of the Armenian chapter of the party. Thus Mr. Shirkhanyan should be asked a question whose order he is doing,” said G. Yeghiazaryan.