Yesterday Rouben Hovsepyan (member of the RA National Assembly and representative of the “ Armenian Revolutionary Federation”) during his meeting with the students of theatre and cinema university said: “I didn’t come here to instruct you to vote “yes” for the Constitution, but I came here to help you make a conscious decision and choice”. But just a couple of minutes later he rejected what he had said by saying: “it is one month that people speak about this and try to influence on voters’ free will”.
There were few students in the hall. Head of the university students’ union was on stage with R. Hovsepyan and when people started to leave the hall one by one, he called one of the students and told him to close the door and not to let anyone out. The Constitutional Draft information books were tore and thrown in the hall. It was clear that no one was interested in the informational booklets and in what R. Hovsepyan was saying. “I have never been in this kind of difficult situation. I always come to this hall to watch you singing and dancing. Of course my speech is not so pleasant to you as your play is to me, but the only thing that makes me happy is that I can assist you in this chaos going on during the Constitutional campaign”, -said R. Hovsepyan before starting his speech (probably he saw that the students didn’t like his intention). But since he couldn’t leave at once, he said several sentences. “As a result of these kinds of changes people see that the old Constitution has gotten old like an old dress that is out of fashion. And now our Constitution has become too old, it is already out of fashion”, -said R. Hovsepyan to the students. But the students were ignoring this. R. Hovsepyan said that a lot of changes had been made to the Constitution which concerned them too. And the head of students’ union asked him a question concerning when people would feel that difference. “I can’t say that they can feel the difference right after the day of the referendum, but now I am speaking about the developments that we must be involved in”, -said Mr. Hovsepyan. It was clear that students didn’t like his speech. “Due to these changes all citizens have a right to apply to the Constitutional Court. There is no place to complain any more. People find themselves faced with a lot of problems when they apply to court. And often courts don’t make fair decisions. So what else can they do? The Constitutional Court is fair and here people get a chance to solve their problems fairly. According to the existing Constitution only a few organizations and people can apply to the Constitutional Court. But now due to this new Constitutional Draft the Constitutional Court will be open to everyone. This is done so people can protect their rights and themselves. But it is impossible to apply this one at once either”, -said Mr. Hovsepyan. Here one of the students said laughing: “You’d better not say that. You are right, you can’t apply this at once”, -then he stood up and turned to his friend and said, – “but we can apply this one at once”, -and they left the hall. At this time R. Hovsepyan was already answering to a question concerning dual citizenship: “If someone asks me what I like most in this Draft, I will say that I like this provision. Because it lets us keep our national traditions. We couldn’t reach this goal in the first Constitutional Draft (Armenian Revolutionary Federation). And those people who were against this provision then, now still have the same opinion in order to justify themselves with amazing ideas”, -said R. Hovsepyan. Then he told about how he had searched in the Internet and found countries that had dual citizenship in their legislation: “It turned out that few countries had this law about dual citizenship, but most of those countries were countries that had problems with their nation”.
The next question concerned the criticisms of the opposition that this new Constitution will create a chance to give the borders and the territory of the country very easily. To this question he answered: “This is a serious issue and they may criticize it. According to the same Article the National Assembly can declare war. If the National Assembly is the most important body in our country you have to trust them. On the other hand the NA may not take on such a big responsibility and may organize a referendum for these kinds of important national issues. So why don’t you trust them to adopt decisions concerning border changes when you trust them to declare war, to adopt laws, etc. ? Why are you so suspicious? Why do you think that tomorrow betrayers may be elected in the NA and sell the territory, for example, to Turkey? Who told you this? Anything can happen. Stupid people may be elected in the NA, they may protect their own interests, but traitors can never be elected in the NA. This is a dangerous censure, try to stay away from this”, -said R. Hovsepyan and concluded his speech with this note. In a minute there was no one in the hall any more, and R. Hovsepyan was so confused that instead of leaving the stage he went backstage. Fortunately he could orient later and returned to the stage again.