“The bad thing is that many people can’t even measure the steps that they take. There was a political party that claimed to ‘propagandize and vote “for” the constitution, but then told the people to come and see what will happen if there are out of turn elections?’ The people claiming this had announced it to Condaleza Rice’s vice Mr. Frid both orally and written. During Mr. Frid’s visit to Armenia, they had asked him to ‘tell Robert Kocharyan that they would vote “yes” to the constitutional amendments if he did away with the National Assembly and organize new elections.’ This made absolutely no sense. If the constitutional amendments draft is that bad, then they shouldn’t vote for it. If it is good, then they should vote for it. What do out of turn elections have to do with anything? Do those elections change the quality of the draft?” said vice speaker of the National Assembly Tigran Torosyan during a debate with Albert Bazeyan at the “Hayeli” club. Although Tigran Torosyan did not state any name, it was clear that this was referring to leader of the “National Unity” political party Artashes Geghamyan. According to Tigran Torosyan’s boycott, the people in favor of “yes” or “no” can express their point of views, but what he doesn’t understand is how people can make comments when there are only a couple of days left until the constitutional amendments referendum. “Generally, if the referendum falls in the same time slot as the state elections, then the number of voters increases. During its meetings, the opposition noticed that the number of people voting “no” is small in number and decided to announce organizing a boycott in order to include different types of citizens in its number of people. I would recommend them to take into consideration the fact that 45% of the population is not going to participate in the referendum and in order for them to figure out the number of people on their side, they should take out 45%. If people keep on changing decisions, that means that they have no basis for rejecting the draft. Of course, that doesn’t refer to Mr. Bazeyan,” said Tigran Torosyan in regard to the opposition’s boycott. In response to all of this, Albert Bazeyan said that he accepts the accusations aimed towards the opposition. “The evaluations regarding the opposition also refer to us as a political party. I thank the authorities for being worried about the behavior of the opposition and its indecisive activity,” said Albert Bazeyan in response to Tigran Torosyan’s allegations. However, according to him, the opposition is unified and makes decisions as a whole. The rest are just strategic issues. “The strategy that the opposition chooses depends on the political situation at the given time,” said Bazeyan.
