“If the elections of 2003 were violated, why did you accept the speaker’s position? I understand the point of the opposition and that Aram Z. Sargsyan doesn’t set foot in the parliament because the elections were violated. What about you?” Robert Kocharyan asked Arthur Baghdasaryan during the last meeting of the coalition.
Generally, according to people who know the president’s character and approach to issues concerning legitimacy, Kocharyan doesn’t like any ideas concerning legitimacy, thinks that these ideas are addressed to him and punishes them even if they are pro-government politicians. Accordingly, the reason for the last political developments is not Arthur Baghdasaryan’s announcements concerning moving towards NATO and Euro integration, but his announcements and hints concerning the electoral violations of 2003. “Those people, who think that they will be able to violate the coming elections, are mistaken, because those times have passed and the coming elections can’t be violated like the elections of 2003, otherwise it will have very dangerous results”, said Arthur Baghdasaryan to “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” newspaper. This announcement is the reason why the Rule of Law and Arthur Baghdasaryan were punished.
After all these political developments and his resignation from the NA speaker’s position Arthur Baghdasaryan is doing his best to create a political crisis in the parliament. Currently Baghdasaryan is actively negotiating with the “Justice” and “National Unity” oppositional parties to drop their mandates in the parliament with the purpose of creating a crisis in the parliament. According to them, if the opposition boycotts the works of the parliament, the authorities will have to disband the parliament and organize new parliamentary elections. But the parliament is considered to be formed if it has over 86 members. This means that in this case the resignation of about 30 deputies will not mean anything. As for the political point, it may have serious results. If the opposition boycotts the works of the parliament and then drops their mandates, it may create a political crisis. Amongst all that is going on, Arthur Baghdasaryan hopes to become oppositional leader after this step. Now he is trying to prove that after all critical announcements made by the opposition concerning the violated elections they didn’t manage to drop their mandates. By doing what he wants to do he will prove that in spite of all these ideas he is able to unite the opposition and become their leader. The most interesting thing is that both the oppositional powers and the Rule of Law reject the rumors saying that they are negotiating. “No, we are not going to drop our mandates, we will work in this field and will be more active”, said the Rule of Law faction secretary, Heghine Bisharyan. As for the head of Republic party, Aram Z. Sargsyan, and the head of the political board of the party, Smbat Ajvazyan, who have always been petitioning their colleagues to drop their mandates and haven’t set foot in the parliament since they were elected, said that they hadn’t heard anything like that before. (In spite of this, according to our information the Republic party is the first one that the Rule of Law met and negotiated with). “Currently we are not negotiating with the Rule of Law”, said Aram Sargsyan. We wonder whether they will agree to drop their mandates if they are offered to do so. “It is not good to express ideas based on “if”. We will answer to this question only when we drop the mandates”, he said. As for Smbat Ajvazyan, he said, “If the Rule of Law and Justice drop their mandates, it will result in a crisis already. And after that it is quite possible that some other deputies may follow them and drop their mandates too”. We were informed by the Justice and National Unity factions that the Rule of Law hadn’t offered them such things. As for dropping their mandates, they said that they would answer to such questions only if they are suggested to do so. “This issue is serious and should be discussed. From the political point this step is very serious. But I think that it is worth doing that only if we know what the next step is going to be. We will be able to speak about the possibility of such things only after discussing the details”, said Justice faction member Hrant Khachatryan.