On October 23, the parliament began discussions and it was evident that the deputies were not curious about the bill on “founding a committee for investigating cases concerning the Armenian Genocide” proposed by Tatul Manaseryan and approved by the NA constant committee on state and legal issues.
It is worth mentioning that the ARF doesn’t advocate the bill on founding a committee on Genocide issues since they think that it will heat up relations between Turkey and Armenia and prevent the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in foreign parliaments. Tatul Manaseryan took his bill back. During this period, the parliament is mainly interested in two discussions-the law on privatizing lands for state purposes and the amendment of the electoral code of Armenia, transforming the 100% majority basis electoral system. It’s better to discuss the second bill first. It is evident that the Republicans are against this draft; furthermore, the ARF may be against it too since Armen Rustamyan says that they haven’t come to an agreement regarding their policy yet. Gegham Manoukyan said that the ARF thinks that the 100% majority basis elections system is aimed towards providing more places based on majority and says that this political act may be referred to as “action majority”. This bill for adopting a new system of full majority basis elections was proposed by Viktor Dallakyan, who in fact was elected on minority basis. During the session of the constant committee on state and legal issues, the Republicans were the first to vote against the bill proposed by Viktor Dallakyan. The ULP, RL, Justice and NU parties voted for that draft and advocated Dallakyan’s proposal. The republicans say that if the parliament discusses the proposal, they will revise their decision concerning the proportion of parliament spots (75-56).
The next topic that parliamentarians mainly discuss is the bill for privatization of lands for state purposes and this is the first time that the parliament is talking about it. In regard to this, the secretary of the “Justice” faction said, “It is a shame to bring the same bill to the parliament for the third time”. The deputy said that the same law had been rejected twice and was brought to the parliament again. It is included in the list of bills to be discussed. The speaker said that they couldn’t solve the problem by rejecting the issue and leaving it part of the agenda; they should discuss and make a final decision to solve the problem. The speaker also said that the parliament could change bills and adopt the amended version. While the parliament was discussing the mentioned issues, the “victims of state needs” were organizing a strike not far from the parliament. The participants of the strike argued that even though the same law had been rejected twice and they had organized different discussions and received recommendations from NGOs, they had still brought the same bill to the parliament and hadn’t amended it at all. The director of “Property right protection” NGO, Vachagn Hakobyan told us that after the discussions and before bringing up the bill in the parliament again, a number of NGOs had made recommendations to the head of the constant committee on state and legal issues and to the Justice Minister, David Harutyunyan, nevertheless, the mentioned recommendations weren’t accepted and the law had not been amended; thus, it was brought to the parliament again in the same format. “If the parliament approves the bill the way it is once again, we will apply to the European court of human rights protection and will ask SOS from all the human rights protection international organizations to help us get rid of the current authorities” said V. Hakobyan. Hakobyan said that the authorities are committing violations. V. Hakobyan said that if the parliament adopted that bill, they wouldn’t be satisfied with their application to the European court and would organize strikes in the streets to bring political issues into the light; after all, among the citizens were eight people who had been forced out of their homes and lost their apartments. The rally was organized with the participation of citizens from the Northern and Main Avenues, Kozern, Dalma, Nork and Kond districts of Yerevan carrying posters with the words “destroying homes is a big sin”. They protested against the government to include their proposals in the bill. “The old bill goes against the interests of the people. With that they are trying to cover and hide the violations and the sins they have committed and stop us to struggle, but we will never give it up. We will make these thieves resign resign”, said V. Hakobyan. The latter assures that they will go out to streets and will reach their goal by all means. “They can beat us, they can accuse us, they can do everything they want to us, but we are not going to give up and will make them resign”, said V. Hakobyan.