“My father is socialist, I am liberal”

17/07/2006 Arman GALOYAN

– What can you say concerning the fact that recently your father, Razmik Darbinyan, announced that he intends on joining the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF)?

– I can say that the reason is the fact that the current political field of Armenia is almost collapsed. For our elder generations, for our fathers, who have more social and nationalistic ideas, it is very difficult to orient in the current political field because they don’t have active political options to make a choice between. This is probably why my father, being politically active and a responsible person, made that decision.

– What didn’t your father like in your “Dignified Future” party that he decided to join another party?

– My party is liberal and has open-minded ideologies. My father and generally the representatives of elder generations can’t be bearers of those ideologies. How can they join our party if they are not liberal? This is the reason.

– Since you mentioned liberal ideologies, please tell me whether the rumors claiming that “Dignified Future”, “United Labor Party” and “Christian Democratic Party” are currently negotiating and may collaborate in the future are true.

– Our party is not going to be a part of an alliance in the future. Our party will participate in the elections and its goal is to win.

– Compared to other parties “Dignified Future” party is passive in this phase. What would you say about that?

– There aren’t any parties involved in serious political activities in Armenia. And in this framework, the understandings of active and passive involvements are relative. The problem is the fact that they spend illegally earned money on different things. I don’t agree that it is an active political involvement. Accordingly, my party is not going to be so active as the mentioned ones.

– Do you mean that “Dignified Future” is going to participate in the elections alone?

– There may be many powers that need to collaborate with us. But we don’t need to be included in any alliances. We are strong enough to compete and in the framework of our ideology I don’t think we have any serious competitors.

– If your party is so strong, how can you explain the fact that during the previous elections it failed to get over 5% of the votes and have mandates in the parliament? And generally, are you sure that the same will not happen this time?

– We can’t guarantee that. Our guarantees are our expectations that people will make the right choice during the upcoming parliamentary elections. Otherwise, parties will not be able to have places in the parliament. Besides that, I don’t agree that our party lost during the previous elections. There was electoral fraud and the results were false.