Yesterday “Armenian Revolutionary Federation” organized a meeting and the agenda was the following: “Constitutional Amendments – a chance for national agreement”. According to member of the National Assembly Armen Roustamyan the purpose of this meeting was to help those people that hadn’t made any decision to orient and take part in this important referendum. With this purpose they had invited about 80 representatives of intelligentsia and university rectors, but only 30 of them were present. Mr. Roustamyan asked the participants to evaluate the campaigning process. He also asked them to discuss whether those people that advocated “yes” were right or no. Mr. Roustamyan was disappointed to learn that not one of the participants wanted to make a speech. “Please feel free to express your ideas. When you start expressing your ideas we will be able to conduct our discussion”, -said Mr. Roustamyan. He was asking them to speak so long that even those people that had been advocating for the Constitutional Draft started to say what they really thought about the Constitution. For instance Karine Danielyan said that she hadn’t made a decision on what kind of choice to make, because there were serious reasons both for “yes” and for “no”. She didn’t like especially Article 10 of our Constitution, which according to her is not complete and good even after the amendments. “This concerns ecology. When there were discussions in the NA, I asked “ARF” to discuss this article in details and made my suggestions, but they told me to tell this to “Rule of Law” political party, I did so but they told me to ask this to someone else. So I tried to find any solution for about six months, but there was no result”, -said K. Danielyan. Yesterday head of Armenian-Russian Slavonic University Armen Darbinyan that had been advocating “yes” didn’t say anything good concerning the Draft. Concerning the assurances of Mr. Roustamyan that this new Constitution would lead Armenia to development he said: “This is very much like the promise of a person who is not able to give up smoking: when he promises but the next morning smokes again. I don’t think that by bringing up this Constitution our economy will develop rapidly”. In addition to this Mrs. Danielyan said the same idea that she was not sure that after the referendum is brought up the country would develop rapidly. “For example we worked hard with students and cleaned the canyon of Hrazdan and it was again under the disposal of the city administration. But some time later NA member Samvel Alexanyan bought this place and built a restaurant there. This was prohibited by the existing Constitution too”, -said Mrs. Danielyan. She also said that some state bodies violated laws and international convention regulations by saying that they have a decision of a local state body. Mr. Darbinyan wondered who was the real “author” of this Constitutional Draft and who was the responsible person for it: “We don’t know with whom we can discuss issues. Last time we knew that the responsible person was Vladimir Nazaryan so we could discuss some issues with him”. Hrant Margaryan didn’t like this idea concerning Mr. Nazaryan that had passed away: “Mr. Nazaryan was not responsible for that Constitution, he had only written it as a specialist and had got an order for this. It is not correct to say that he was the responsible person for that, because this was an order for him”. Then he realized that if he went on in this way they would fail the initiative discussion they had planned and said that they had gathered there to discuss issues concerning orienting people. The participants were surprised and asked each other: “Why did they call us here? Did they do this to make us vote “yes” for the Constitution?” Then dean of the jurisprudence faculty of the state university Gagik Ghazinyan said that it was too late to organize this kind of discussion only four days prior to the referendum. “It was difficult for us to find the preliminary Draft. Then when we found it, member of the NA Rafik Petrosyan, who is also a lecturer at our university, said that we didn’t have to spend time on it because those articles that we were interested in had already been amended. So we couldn’t find the final Draft to work on it. We can’t find anyone that is responsible for this Draft so we can debate and discuss issues with them. There are also small shortcomings”, -said Mr. Ghazinyan and added that the Constitution was not a good basement to make people to come to a national agreement. In order to save the situation Mr. Roustamyan said that he was surprised because it was difficult even for representatives of intelligentsia to express opinions on the Constitutional Draft. “Is it so difficult to picture the situation? For instance if we have a carrot and a beet and say that we have only these two things, make your choice which one you want. Will you ask us to bring an apple because you don’t like carrot and beet? There is no apple, there are only a carrot and a beet. Is it so difficult to understand this? People must make their choice between a carrot and a beet”, – got angry Mr. Roustamyan. Political interpreter from “Armenia TV” Rafik Hovhannisyan tried to help Mr. Roustamyan and asked members of ARF to ask Mr. Kocharyan to make a speech for the society during the coming days. Then he said that some oppositionists would advocate the Constitution in case they were provided with a good position in the government and said that if he had a chance to meet them he would tell them who they were. Then he told Levon Mkrtchyan that he was not aware of the Draft and asked him to give him a copy. By the way senior lecturer of historical sciences Youri Hovsepyan said: “The president must explain some things to the public. Our authorities make speeches only during the Christmas time to congratulate our public”. The participants of the meeting didn’t agree with the provision concerning dual citizenship either. For instance doctor of political sciences Armen Ajvazyan said to the participants that dual citizenship was prohibited only in Haiti and Uganda and the last leader was a man-eater. Some lecturers and other participants were confused and said to each other: “Kocharyan is a man-eater too. Does the existing president of Uganda eat people now?”
Vahan Hovhannisyan told the participants that most people couldn’t orient because no one had offered them bribe. At the end of the meeting we asked Mr. Roustamyan whether this meeting was a campaign for “no” and an attempt to disorient people or not. To this question he answered: “No. We want people to make choices conscientiously. We didn’t want to make a show or a play here”.
P.S. Some people that advocated for “yes” had the same opinion concerning the Constitution (Yerevan Economical University rector Grigor Kirakosyan, film producer Armen Mazmanyan, rector of Gladzor University (the brother of military general prosecutor Gagik Jhangiryan) Jora Jhangiryan). None of them was sure that the new Constitution would be applied and followed like the existing one.