The problem is that before the voting of the governmental privatization program of 2001-2003 Arthur Baghdasaryan said that he wouldn’t vote for that program and made a hint to their party members not to vote for it either. But A. Sargsyan didn’t obey and voted for the abovementioned program. This is the reason why Mr. Sargsyan was excluded from “Rule of Law”. Mr. Sargsyan’s cell-phone was turned off all day long yesterday and we couldn’t get any information from him. One thing is clear: the “Rule of Law” regrets including A. Sargsyan in their list of MPs and going against Arayik Hayrapetyan. As for the other members that abstained, according to “Rule of Law” secretary, Hovhannes Margaryan, the board didn’t discuss anything concerning them because to abstain still doesn’t mean to agree with the program. According to the party board not being against the program still doesn’t mean not to obey what the party board says. But our correspondent asked H. Margaryan whether abstaining didn’t mean not to obey their decisions, to which he answered, “There are two options for voting, if we are not for a program, it means that we are either against it or abstained. There have been abstained voting too, which doesn’t mean to agree with the program”. Mr. Margaryan also understands that and says, “Our approach is not to agree with the program. If our MPs were either against the program or abstained, this means that they did what they were told to do. I don’t see anything wrong in abstinence. Politics is not like a fairy-tale, it is based on real facts. The only fact that we have now is that one party member was excluded last night”.
According to Mher Shagledyan, who did what he had been told to do very well, says that they didn’t boycott the voting so as not to let others say that the “Rule of Law” doesn’t have their own approach. “No, we have our approach. This is a political decision and there is no need to discuss it”, he said in response to the remark that the “Rule of Law” could help stop the vote in case of boycotting it.
By the way, “National Unity” party is more liberal and is not going to exclude Harutyun Muradyan for not going along with the decision of Artashes Geghamyan. According to the NU secretary, Alexan Harutyunyan, this voting had two meanings: political and moral. He also said that he understood the moral point of Muradyan, but didn’t understand the political point. “From the moral point of view I understand the approach of Muradyan, because H. Muradyan’s “BAMO” company bought the sport and concert complex of Yerevan. He couldn’t hold back and had to come and vote for it. This is the moral point, as for the political one, I don’t agree with him. He is a member of our party and must be a part of it”, said A. Karapetyan. He also advised to remember the group of “those immoral people”, who helped stop the vote. Of course he hinted the “Rule of Law”.
As for the head of the parliamentary ULP faction, Gurgen Arsenyan, when trying to explain the behavior of the “Rule of Law” MPs, he said that this was probably the case for their faction, i.e. free voting. According to G. Arsenyan if the coalitional parties are showing their intimate ties with MPs at the National Assembly this means that they are doing this for competition. “Usually there are internal conflicts, which we can sometimes see in the parliament. Usually conflicts between governmental powers are kept secret. But this time they published that information, on the basis of which we can assume that there are serious conflicts between the authorities. This coalition is going to bring the budget draft of 2007 to the parliament to put up for discussion. And if there are corporative conflicts, each political power will do its best to use the draft for their pre-election purposes. I think it’s possible that the coalition will dissolve, but the budget must be approved before that. And if not, it will keep being a political budget”, said the head of the ULP party.
The most important opinion concerning the recent developments in “Rule of Law” is what head of the ARF parliamentary faction Levon Mkrtchyan said. “If I were a party leader I would resign if an MP representing my party didn’t go along with the decisions of the board. For instance if we make a decision to vote and if the MPs of our faction don’t do so, I will resign for not being able to do my work and will raise that issue in the party board to discuss. In that case I will resign myself”, said L. Mkrtchyan hinting what Arthur Baghdasaryan should do next.
P.S. By the way, yesterday Galust Sahakyan answered to journalists’ question whether they would give membership to Artak Sargsyan, who had been excluded from “Rule of Law” and said, “I don’t know whether our party has organized entrance exams in this period or not”.