The first Ombudsman of Armenia, Larissa Alaverdyan, has accepted the invitation of her successor Armen Harutyunyan to meet most probably next week. “I am not motivated to acting strangely. I don’t know what questions he’s going to ask, maybe administrative,” she said. According to Alaverdyan the Ombudsman’s reputation is mainly connected with the reputation of the institute. “If it has an imitative image it means the Ombudsman belongs to some parties and is being controlled by the government”, ensures the first Ombudsman. To the question whether there’s a possibility that the first Ombudsman will be in politics she answered, “I always avoided politics. But I don’t mean that I’m isolated from politics. The thing is that in Armenia anyone who knows the alphabet is in politics. I wouldn’t like to belong to any party. During Soviet times, I didn’t belong to a party because there was only one party. Now I don’t either because there are many parties. All this may be done through NGOs. Everyone should feel that the opposition is watching his or her every step, no matter in the National Assembly or outside”, she says. If we don’t focus on the 2007 Parliamentary Elections we’ll have the same elections as we used to. If we don’t start the process now the outcome will not be good. We are in the process of mutation, which is very hard to prevent.” While speaking about the newly established parties Alaverdyan mentioned, “What other reason is there other than to build a team?”
