NA deputies are invited to take part in a special parliamentary session, where RA general prosecutor Aghvan Hovsepyan is going to make a speech, after which MPs will vote for ceasing the personal immunity right of deputy Hakob Hakobyan, who has just recently become a member of “Republican Party of Armenia”.
If any of the deputies manages not to appear in the parliament as everyone has been told by the authorities to do, they will be obliged to do that. Anyhow, this was what we were told by some deputies, who complained that they couldn’t let their colleague down in five minutes and let him get a warning by Aghvan Hovsepyan’s. “Everyone was told by the president’s office that we all have to leave everything aside and vote for ending his untouchable right due to the fact that the deputy has committed an error” said one of the deputies, “However, Hakob didn’t do well really; he made us face a difficult problem. We don’t have a choice”. As for the ARP, they are going to vote for ceasing their colleague’s personal untouchable right since the latter committed an error and had to take on the responsibility for himself. “It is time to stop such violations, we are not responsible for the violations that others commit. Enough is enough”, said the republicans in anger and added that they had discussed the issue in the party and decided to let their colleague be punished. “What do you think? Do you think we are going to protect him so that people say that we are advocating criminals? No, we are not going to do that”, said the republicans. As for the ARF, they are going to vote for that too since they don’t want to come up with a new tradition of not punishing violators like in the past. The ARF leaders think that they should start punishing everyone that may violate the law and Hakob Hakobyan is going to be the first one to be punished for something like this.
Several days ago the president met with representatives of parliamentary groups, and as we were told by some deputies, ordered not to go against the steps taken by the general prosecutor’s office. According to our information, the president said that particularly to the ULP, ARF and “Business” factions and some independent MPs. As for the republicans, they haven’t been warned since they have decided to punish their colleague.
As for the opposition, they haven’t talked about their approach, however we were told by some deputies that they are going to do the vice versa of whatever the republicans decide to do. It means that if the governmental powers vote for the mentioned recommendation, they will vote against it. “It is not logical, but it is a fact. Our colleagues are trying to get rid of that so that they can criticize them in the future of advocating criminals. That’s their strategy”, said an oppositionist, “The voting records are unclear, accordingly we will do that and then will criticize them and say that it was their job. This is a good trick”. The mentioned oppositionist asked to stay anonymous and added that their votes were not enough for failing the process, however, they were asking the MPs that were suspicious to find out how many potential votes they may have too, thus, when they see that someone does not like that idea, they recommend them making the voting a failure. Nevertheless, the republicans have told the deputies that the opposition is not doing that to support Hakob Hakobyan, but is doing that to go against their party, but they won’t succeed. In other words, the republicans assure that the opposition will not be able to “cheat” them. “It is not so easy to cheat those deputies. The opposition has a long way to go in order to get up to our level. They think that they have become so clever that they may cheat us and we may not understand that they are tricking us,” said a deputy and added that he “is one who does everything based on logic and the “truth” and has never handed anyone over to the police.” “I don’t like such things at all, however, Hakob has made us face a big problem and if we vote against that recommendation, we will have to stop our children from playing with other children since they will tell them that their father advocates criminals” said a republican deputy who had joined that party only recently and was accompanied by several other businessmen-deputies.
Representative of oppositional “Justice” alliance Stepan Zakaryan told “A1+” that their party had not discussed that issue yet, however they were going to ask questions to Aghvan Hovsepyan and Hakob Hakobyan to find out what really happened. S. Zakaryan said that according to their information, the guys that were with them were not body guards, but had been sent to give a payback to Hakob Hakobyan: “Who knows? Maybe Hakob Hakobyan tried to protect himself. It is said as well that the problem comes from the president’s office; we should find out what the real matter is” said Stepan Zakaryan. “National Unity” has not discussed that issue either and Alexan Karapetyan has informed “A1+” that they would not advocate the authorities when discussing that issue for sure.
In other words, the outcome was supposed to be clear on Friday. According to our information, on Friday Hakob Hakobyan was to be brought to the parliament handcuffed as is required by the law. In fact, in the given case, the legislators don’t want to violate the law, even the law concerning handcuffs.
P.S. By the way, we were told by the “People’s Deputy” faction that they will follow their decision that in all cases of voting the members of their faction are independent and can vote as they like. Hakob Hakobyan is a member of the “People’s Deputy” faction.