According to our information, the Republic Party of Armenia plans to recruit new people in the party board during the party summit on November 28.
The prime minister Tigran Sargsyan will be recruited in the executive body of the party. We asked this question to the spokesman of the RPA, MP Edward Sharmazanov and he neither approved nor refuted the mentioned information. He said that this issue had to be decided during the session by the delegates. “It depends on the recommendations. I suppose the Prime Minister should be included in the executive body because it is logical that the PM of the country is included in the executive body of the party as well. However the decision shall be taken during the summit by the delegates,” said Edward Sharmazanov.
According to our information, Yerevan mayor Gagik Beglaryan will be included in this body too. The RPA executive body currently has 12 members. During the summit in 2007 the party elected 13 members but after Tigran Torosyan’s resignation from the position of the parliament’s speaker the number of the members became 12. The number of the RPA executive body will be 14 if besides these two members new members are not included or the old ones don’t resign. “I don’t think the number of the members may be cut down, and I don’t think there will be many new members,” says Edward Sharmazanov.
There are rumors that Tigran Sargsyan’s membership in the RPA is against the political interests of Hovik Abrahamyan and Gagik Tsarukyan. If Tigran Sargsyan becomes a member of the RPA executive body, he will have the same political status in the party as Hovik Abrahamyan. The latter is a member of the RPA executive body too. However, there are other rumors as well, according to which the Prime Minister seeks membership in the RPA party in order not to be criticized at least by the governmental party for the poor economic policy.
The changes in the RPA party will not be limited with new memberships. According to our information, they are going to amend the bylaws of the party as well. The RPA has a board and executive body. The board is the representation and decision maker body of the party. The executive body is in charge of policies, as well as the decisions of the board and setting up a date for the summit. In other words, in fact the executive power has some less powers than the board. However, if they amend the the bylaws of the party, henc the decision making body will be the executive body. It emans that the top positions in the RPA are going to be slightly changed. In fact the members of the board, including the deputy chairmen, who are co-founders of the party as well, will have to take secondary roles now. Instead of that the new members such as the PM and mayor of Yerevan will have more powers to make decisions. In other words, instead of taking some poweers and centralizing the powers for making decisions in the hands of a couple of persons they have decided to change the decision making body at once in order to escape from the painful procedures of making some people resign. It means that after this summit Galust Sargsyan and Razmik Zohrabyan will maintain their status of the board deputy chairmen as well. During our phone conversation Sharmazanov escaped from touching upon the expected changes in their party. “As far as the summit agenda is not approved, the amendments were not submitted, I don’t think it is correct to discuss this issue in the press,” he said.
On the other hand these changes will not have a significant result. It doesn’t matter who the one to make decisions is because the last word always is said by the chairman of the party. The one to make final decisions is the president and the other people will have to obey and adopt the decisions. Definitely we will see such thing during the 12th summit of the RPA too.