Yesterday the National Assembly began to discuss the bill on amnesty proposed by the RA President, which will continue today as well. The publicized bill shows that Amnesty will be enacted in Armenia for the ninth time. Under the document, 396 convicts and 153 pretrial detainees will be released; the prison terms of 379 inmates will be reduced. Most importantly the amnesty will include Nicol Pashinyan, Sasoun Mikaelyan and Ara Hovhannisyan. Among the political prisoners the amnesty won’t affect Shmavon Galstyan. In a word, this is a really broad-scale amnesty, which was also mentioned at the National Assembly as well. But yesterday’s discussions of the NA were hilarious in the reflection of the speeches made in regard with the amnesty. All the governmental MPs, were saying lofty words about this act by qualifying it the humane behavior of the president and the government. And indeed, none of them bothered to ask why this wasn’t done three years ago. Why did the government decide to release them now? And as they say the amnesty helps overcome the polarized environment in the society and the tension that exists then whose fault is it that it hasn’t been done earlier? This means that the amnesty was initiated by the government elite to resolve some of their own issues, which indeed won’t relieve the overall situation in the country. On the other hand, the amnesty in its current shape and format approached the ANC to a deadlock. The latter continues announcing about starting a dialog with the government after releasing the political prisoners by only imposing them to hold extraordinary elections. The government uses all its means to make it clear that there cannot be any by-elections. The ANC insists on the same (without having any other option) by not even approximately explaining what it’s going to do if the by-elections are not held. In a word, after the amnesty the wall of intolerance will be replaced by chess wall.
