A former leading member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), the former consul of Armenia in Saint Petersburg Ruben Hakobyan has joined the Heritage party. Hakobyan declined to comment on his decision to join Heritage. And the Heritage in its turn didn’t think too much to accept Hakobyan’s desire of membership to the party because of having common opinions around certain issues. According to certain information this step of Hakobyan wasn’t just so sudden and he was recruited to the party to realize a governmental “project” in the framework of the new opposition. Let us remember that during the past one year the government has used various occasions to include the Heritage in the ARF and other semi-governmental forces to form the third political force. Because of that reason some of the Heritage members were ousted or deflected from the party. Hakobyan aligned himself with the Heritage party nearly two years after being expelled from Dashnaktsutyun following his public criticism of its activities. He was particularly unhappy with its decision to cut a power-sharing deal with President in the wake of the disputed February 2008 presidential election. And Raffi Hovhannisyan, who was speaking about leaving the politics, refused his decision of giving up his mandate of the MP. Perhaps things will be clarified around the Heritage or through Heritage in the beginning of May, during the planned congress of the party.
