The National Assembly did not hold an exclusive session for discussing
the return of deposits to the people. A couple of days before the
session, President Robert Kocharyan had announced that we have a large
number of deputies who are reasonable, and believe it or not, he was
right. In just two days the number of “non-reasonable deputies” went
down from 66 to 44. Of course, the topic was not the return of
deposits. The deposits were not going to be returned and both the
people who organized the session and the ones against it knew that
beforehand. They also know that in February 2005, the President will
take certain measures in “doing away” with the whole issue. It turns
out that the aim for this chaotic session was the following: to show
who the real leader of the National Assembly is and to make the others
understand that they can not play around with populism without getting
punished for it. However, Artur Baghdasaryan was stuck in a bad
situation. Whatever the case, Armenia is not a country where one can
express an opinion which differs from the President’s opinion, or go
against the budget for the sake of populism, and as if that wasn’t
enough, get a medal for the French “Legeon Honor” award. So, Hmayak
Hovhannisyan can feel content. It was worth it to see Artur
Baghdasaryan in such a situation. Of course, the republicans were not
doing so well either. True, they got what they wanted in a formal
way-the session was cancelled, but that session was cancelled not
because of them, but rather thanks to the “certainty” of the President.
This means that if the President “certifies” anything and claims that
the deputies may not participate in the discussion about the state
budget, then the Prime Minister and his colleagues can consider
themselves unemployed. But did the President really win? It is true
that he “gave the answers to everybody” and was able to prove that he
is the leader of the National Assembly, but at the same time he was
forced to announce that he has never promised the people to return the
deposits. Basically, the deputies understood two concepts after all of
this: 1. The president governs the country by himself. 2. The president
has no intentions of returning the deposits. The political forces
simply tried to get an advantage out of all this and “prove” that while
others do not think about the people, they do that day and night.
In a word, nothing good came out of all this. But the signatures were so nice…