The political parties and the former chairman of the National Assembly Babken Ararktsyan meet with members of the “Armat” (Root) NGO to discuss urgent political issues each week. The main participants of the meetings are usually NGO members and political parties founded way back during the Armenian National Movement, for example, the “Democratic Homeland” headed by Petros Makeyan) and “Conservative Party” headed by Michael Hayrapetyan. The “Republic” has also participated in some of the meetings and has represented member of the party council Artak Zeynalyan.
Many are of the opinion that the aim for those meetings was the following: the “Armat” NGO members are mainly trying to unite liberals and form a new ideology. But there are others who think that they will not be able to achieve this. The thing is that there have been similar attempts of doing that in the past and they have failed due to the personal ambitions of the initiators.
“Armat” NGO members prefer not to publicize their meetings just yet because, as they say, there’s nothing serious for the time being. According to them, other political parties and politicized NGOs discuss and solve the same issues.
“There is no subtext,” said members of “Armat”, probably afraid that their initiative will fail just like the others.
We can’t deny the fact that there is a need for such formats on the threshold of the upcoming 2007 parliamentary elections in Armenia. After all, we have to admit that the pro-government and oppositional fields in Armenia are in chaotic situations. One of the reasons that the opposition is not reaching its goals is because it is in that situation. But what’s most important is who takes the initiative of creating such formats. The Armenian National Movement doesn’t take part in any of the meetings organized by the NGO, better yet, the members of the ANM administrative staff have nothing to do with it because they are not members. Everyone knows that the mentalities of “Armat” NGO members and those of ANM members don’t correspond. This was clear during the last ANM meeting when ANM members part of the “Armat” NGO (including Babken Ararktsyan and Ara Sahakyan), didn’t want to take part in the Armenian National Movement’s session. Only some ANM representatives, who are also members of “Armat” took part, including Ashot Sargsyan and Yerjanik Abgaryan (in fact, the latter were elected as ANM administrative staff members during the session).
Now let’s take the time to interpret the thoughts and opinions of ANM members on this. According to president of the ANM administrative staff Ararat Zurabyan:
“There are some ANM members participating in the meetings, but ANM is not officially part of the union.”
According to Zurabyan, it’s not right to form political parties or unions within NGOs.
“I don’t think that “Armat” NGO is doing the right thing by organizing political meetings. A political party discusses matters and solves them without thinking about joining a union. The ANM is a political party with a liberal ideology,” said head of the ANM administrative staff Ararat Zurabyan. He added that there is no need to find any contradictions amongst all that. Another ANM member, who remained to stay anonymous, said that if the “Armat” NGO members wanted to form a union, they should have formed it during a time when there was a need for them. As for their current meetings and discussions which, for some reason, are not publicized, he said the following:
“Let them discuss whatever they want. Let Babken and his fellow colleague form unions, discuss matters, etc. If they were actually able to form a union, why didn’t they do it back then?”
In fact, many different former authority figures participate in the meetings each time. There are some journalists among them that are trying to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections and join the “fraudulence” team being criticized today. In other words, “Armat” has turned into a place for leisure where getting information is the same as getting information from one of the closed sessions of the ARF Bureau. Let’s just hope that Babken Ararktsyan who, according to “Armat” members is the only one with enough information, is aware that there were other political leaders out there before him working with the same “revealed” method of working.