The NA started its session on November 13 and only in 4 hours was it able to confirm
the agenda. Notwithstanding, the reason of delaying the approval of the agenda was not their active discussions.
The reason is the fact that the factions were asking for a break one after the other. The situation was as usual: 106 deputies had been registered for discussions, but there were only few of them in the hall. The voting process was as usual too: many of the deputies were voting not only for themselves, but for several other deputies that were absent, which made Arshak Sadoyan angry and shout in the hall and he said that could mention the names of those deputies. Nevertheless, Sadoyan didn’t mention the names of those deputies. Even before the voting deputy speaker Vahan Hovhannisyan petitioned deputies not to vote instead of others too and said that even if the bill were not approved that wouldn’t be tragedy, it didn’t help and for the second time the bill was given more votes than before. Anyway, the public’s attention was concentrated on the “draft law on alienating property for state needs”. The parliament was going to discuss that law by a second reading, however it didn’t take place. A group of citizens organized a rally near the building of the parliament trying to stop deputies from entering the parliament with posters “Ruining homes is a big sin” written on them. Some of the participants even suggested taking some deputies as captive to make the parliament stop the discussion, but the others did not agree. The participants of the rally were very active and were demanding the prime minister to resign. The reason of the rally was Article 18 of the mentioned law and the participants were demanding to cancel that article. Some deputies spoke in the parliament that their recommendations had been ignored. For instance, Hmayak Hovhannisyan said that hearings are not organized without any purposes and during the hearing in October concerning the issue of alienating properties for state needs they made many recommendations, nevertheless those recommendations had not been considered and the mentioned article was not removed. NSA speaker Tigran Torosyan said that some of the recommendations made during hearings could not be preceded, but noted that 10 recommendations had been included in the bill. Vardan Khachatryan has suggested organizing another second hearing. What does the mentioned article state that makes people angry? The problem is the fact that the mentioned law states that citizens can’t bring more cases concerning alienating state properties if once the case has been considered by the court. However, the head of the constant commission on state and legal issues, Rafik Petrosyan said that the government had promised to fully take that article out, but it had left a part of it, which states that “if there is a contract…”, the other part has been removed. “This proves that the government protects the rights of those citizens. We have included many recommendations in that bill to protect the rights of citizens” said R. Petrosyan. At that time the participants of the rally were confused and some of them were saying that there were people among them who were sent by Gagik Tsarukyan for the purpose of stopping that rally. However, the parliament discussed the draft budget for 2007 too. The prime minister was in the parliament during that discussion. The latter was informed by journalists that the participants of the rally were going to take deputies as captive from the ARP and ULP parties and demand the prime minister to resign, concerning which he advised the organizers of the rally “to look in the Constitution and find out whether the participants of rallies could demand the resignation of the government or not”. “We have institutions for captured citizens as well” said the prime minister. In regard to the fact that the draft budget provided more income for the government, the prime minister said, “It is a perfect document”. “It doesn’t matter whether it contains risks or not. It can be fulfilled. It is true that it contains risks and the government understands that, but we will do our best to fulfill it in the best manner” said the prime minister. The minister of finances and economy, Vardan Khachatryan said in the parliament that they were going to reach their goal, “especially in cutting down the shady economy percentage in the economy”