Robert Kocharyan doesn’t trust in the coalition any more after the case of Larisa Alaverdyan. As for Armen Harutyunyan, the president trusts him because he has justified the hope of the president for many times. But we can’t say the same about the coalition.
So the coalition is going to nominate Armen Harutyunyan for the ombudsman’s position in the NA on February 6. The coalition has already started to ask different political powers in the NA to vote for A.Harutyunyan. “They ask MPs about their opinion and make marks on their lists. But till now no one besides the coalition has agreed to vote for Mr. Harutyunyan”, says one of the MPs, who is not a representative of the coalition and adds that it will be very difficult for them to bring up the candidacy of Harutyunyan because it is clear to everyone that Harutyunyan is backed by Kocharyan.
But the coalition hopes that the “Justice” parliamentary party doesn’t have a candidate and will not nominate anyone for this position during the first session of the NA. The problem is that yesterday the “Justice” party organized a meeting which lasted about two hours, where they didn’t come to a conclusion to nominate someone, but they decided to ask the NA to let Larisa Alaverdyan present her statement and then decide to advocate Larisa Alaverdyan or Ruben Torosyan, who is also the candidate nominated by the “National Unity”. By the way, yesterday Artashes Geghamyan assured us that all the representatives of their party had signed for their candidate and they are going to nominate Torosyan during the first NA session. Regarding Armen Harutyunyan he said: “I guarantee that Torosyan can be a good ombudsman. I think the coalition can say the same about their candidate. As for my own opinion, I personally respect Armen”.
“We agree with the candidacy of Larisa Alaverdyan. We think that she has done her work well and she did her best to develop the institution of human rights in Armenia. We said that we also agreed with the candidacy of Ruben Torosyan”, said Ruzan Khachatryan after the “Justice” party’s session. But what is going to be the plan of the future activities if the NA doesn’t give a chance to Larisa Alaverdyan to make her statement? To this question R. Khachatryan answered: “we will bring up the issue and if there are disagreements in the NA, we will inform about our future plans. They must have serious reasons not to accept our offer, but they don’t have such reasons. I mean the fulfillment of the law requirements”. Regarding the candidacy of Armen Harutyunyan, R. Khachatryan said that a person who has a clear political orientation and is a partisan can’t be an ombudsman.
“During these years he has protected the rights of a concrete political power: Robert Kocharyan. He was the person who initiated and then presented the draft of the Constitutional amendments. Besides that he doesn’t have any work experience and the fact that he is a lawyer is not a good enough to propose that he can work well in this position. Taking into account all these facts we think that we can’t advocate his candidacy”, says R. Khachatryan.
According to Albert Bazeyan for them this issue is important and is not on a personal level of relations. “It is very interesting for us why the authorities want to replace the ombudsman who was appointed by themselves. That is why we will insist on letting L.Alaverdyan present her statement so everyone can see the reason for this replacement. It is also interesting for us why the authorities want to see someone very close to their power in this position. The person that is to be elected in this position can be either a lawyer or an oppositionist. Because I think the ombudsman is going to protect the violated rights of citizens and oppositionists, but not the authorities. But now the authorities don’t need any ombudsman or someone else to protect them”. According to Mr. Bazeyan they were not going to advocate the candidacy of anyone that represents the authorities and he is sure that Armen Harutyunyan is backed by Kocharyan.
As for Aram G. Sargsyan, he is interested in these issues too and has no personal problems with the candidates: “Why do they want to replace Larisa Alaverdyan when she was appointed by the president? If she makes a statement we will see how well she worked in this position. And if we see that she didn’t work well, we will make a decision whom to advocate. As an oppositionist I would like to see someone independent in this position”.
As for Gegham Harutyunyan (“Republic” party), he is interested in why the authorities want to replace L. Alaverdyan and what they didn’t like in her: “This is a serious issue for the opposition, because anyone representing the governmental powers that tries to be a little independent is fired. This is one of the main problems of the authorities”, says Gegham Harutyunyan. He also reminded us about the announcements made before the referendum stating that in case the new Constitution was adopted the role of the NA would increase and not the president, but the NA would nominate and adopt the candidates for the ombudsman’s position. “But we understand where the candidacy of Armen Harutyunyan comes from. It comes from the president’s office and the NA agrees with it again. This means that everything the authorities used to say before the referendum was absurd. Nothing has changed after the referendum. They used to say that the human rights protection institution would be enlarged, but the situation is still the same. But now we see that it is more than one month that Armenians don’t have a right to be protected by their human rights. The authorities have dissolved this institution illegally and it doesn’t work now. The authorities must give the right of nominating a candidate for the ombudsman’s position to the opposition, because the ombudsman mostly protects the rights of citizens from governmental bodies that violate the rights. And in this case, when they nominate their own candidate this means that they are not going to be controlled. It is clear that in this case they will pressure the ombudsman whenever they like.”
And knowing all these things the opposition still hopes that the authorities will let Larisa Alaverdyan make a statement in the NA on February 6.
P.S. Yesterday Ruzan Khachatryan informed us that they had collected 27 signatures and applied to the Constitutional Court to consider the case of the families that were illegally forced out of their apartments on Buzand street. It is worth to mention that Larisa Alaverdyan has done the same too.