Yesterday the coalition didn’t do as they are used to doing by organizing a competition with one candidate and they didn’t even try to prevent the opposition from nominating their candidate, but what’s more, they gave them several signatures to make everyone sure that Armen Harutyunyan is not the only candidate in this competition. As Hmayak Hovhannisyan said later and Galoust Sahakyan approved, R. Torosyan is just a “sham”.
The “National Unity” needed only 27 signatures from the MPs in order to get a chance to nominate their candidate in the NA for the ombudsman’s position. Even the signatures of the “Justice” and some independent MPs didn’t help them, so they asked for help from the coalition powers. The NU wasn’t supported only by MPs representing the “Armenian Revolutionary Federation”, which as later turned out was a result of bad relations between this political party and R. Torosyan, who by the way used to be a member of this party before. According to Mr. Torosyan the only person that can tell why he was excluded from this party is Levon Mkrtchyan, because he played a key role in that process and he doesn’t know yet whether he was excluded then or still is in their alliance. But Levon Mkrtchyan failed to respond to this note.
The MPs representing the “Justice” party, who hoped that the coalition would accept their offer and would let L. Alaverdyan present her statement and then they would be able to decide whom to advocate, were disappointed yesterday and were asking for live broadcast. V. Dallakyan made such a suggestion, but he was rejected. He also made another suggestion to allow L. Alaverdyan present the statement on the human rights protection institution’s annual activities, but that offer was rejected. L. Alaverdyan will appear in the NA only after the new ombudsman has been elected and will make a speech as a guest.
As for Artashes Geghamyan, he was only interested in one issue: why the coalition let L. Alaverdyan down, “One year ago the coalition was doing its best to protect L. Alaverdyan, so what made the members change their minds and let her down? I understand that people can change their relationships, but why did all coalition powers change their relationship with her at the same time and didn’t even let her make her final speech? Don’t you think that it is not good for a man to punish a woman?” said Artashes Geghamyan. The coalition didn’t respond to this note, they didn’t respond either to the note that “the criminals among the authorities will need someone to protect their human rights very soon and they must do this with the help of a person whom they can trust”.
As for R. Torosyan, as the MPs noted, he was not ashamed to demonstrate his status of a “sham”. He was just not able to make a speech in front of such an audience, where there are a lot of cameras, a lot of people and much passion. R. Torosyan confessed that: “I saw so many cameras taping me for the last time on November 25 in the “Mariott” hotel”. He didn’t even leave the stage after the note of Galust Sahakyan that they had to sign for this candidate in order to not let people say such things that their candidate has no competition and that he is the only candidate for this position. Later G. Sahakyan said that the election of the ombudsman is a political issue for them, because he says that after the referendum the situation changed in the country and they want to see a person in this position who will be well educated and will have good juridical educational qualifications. But G. Sahakyan didn’t speak about what has exactly changed after the referendum.
R. Torosyan’s responses to the questions after his speech made everyone laugh. He spoke about the referendum and about the violations made by the authorities and by the coalition, as well as about the success of our country in European institutions. Later he announced that “the coalition is the root of corruption”, and this made T. Torosyan angry.
R. Torosyan, who is disappointed about the activities of L. Alaverdyan and is proud of what he has done in the past 15 years, while answering to the question of the MP representing the “Rule of Law”, Hovhannes Margaryan, said: “If I had not done a good job, this good parliament would not exist”. To the question how he imagined the ombudsman to be R. Torosyan answered: “Protecting rights must be the job of the ombudsman, if a person does this, he can work in the position of ombudsman. Whatever I do I do with pleasure, without expecting any money”. When MPs were asking each other why this person had agreed to be nominated for this position, go there and be ridiculed, Arshak Sadoyan said: “He did well, he did it with pleasure”. Then Mr. Torosyan started to complain about L. Alaverdyan by saying that she couldn’t say that she had took on this task to protect the president: “After that I visited Larisa and asked her how she could say such a thing, because the president had made so many mistakes that he had to spend his time in the court”. After hearing all this Manuk Gasparyan regretted giving his signature and told R. Torosyan to go down and be sure that he had already lost the competition, because he didn’t want to watch such a poor show. “L. Alaverdyan did not listen to Kocharyan just for one s.m. and she was left out, how are you going to work in this position? This is very like a program and the purpose is to take the MPs’ time”, he said. Then he said that he would take part in that show in case the coalition provided live broadcast, because he had some issues to bring up against A. Harutyunyan. “I have some issues to bring up against A. Harutyunyan, but I will not mention them because he is from Karabakh and he will win the competition at the end, he is a good specialist, he will work and I don’t want him to get this “tag” before starting work in this position. He is not the one to blame, he was offered to take this position, but I wonder why he agreed to accept it”. As for R. Torosyan, regarding him Manuk Gasparyan said: “I think you don’t hope to be elected either. You have crossed the limits already, before you had a chance equal to 10 %, now you have made it 0 yourself. If this is a political show for you and your purpose is to make your political rating go up, then you have reached success”.
As for the speech of Armen Harutyunyan, it was too short and he only said that starting from the very moment when the ombudsman doesn’t act only according to the law, but also acts in the political field, he/she stops being an ombudsman. It is strange but there was no oppositionist to ask Mr. Harutyunyan how he was going to escape from the orders and instructions given by the president and parliament, or how can he make such an announcement when one of the representatives of the powers nominating him, Galust Sahakyan confesses that this step of nominating a candidate for the ombudsman’s position is a political step, which was due to the situation after the referendum.
Instead of all this, Hrant Khachatryan asked Mr. Harutyunyan whether he liked everyone he was going to protect. Anyway, today the second ombudsman is going to be elected behind closed doors. After R. Torosyan’s speech it seemed like the oppositional powers had changed their minds already and were going to vote for Armen Harutyunyan. Maybe this was the purpose of nominating R. Torosyan.