This idea was spoken by representatives of “Alternative” political movement Vahagn Khachatryan (former mayor of Yerevan) and Nycol Pashinyan (“Haykakan jamanak” newspaper, editor in chief) in “Urbat” club yesterday. They think that now the Armenian people should revise the understandings of the authorities and opposition since very often the imagination of the authorities and oppositional powers are almost the same concerning the future of our country. In a word, the “Alternative” is trying to be an alternative political power other than governmental or oppositional powers. We wander why they established the “Alternative” since the ideology is almost the same as the ANM has and most of its members have been members of the ANM as well. To this question Vahagn Khachatryan answered that “there isn’t much difference in the ideologies, but there are differences in the actions”. “There are tactical issues here. When discussing political issues we decided that it is very important to start political active actions as soon as possible. This movement is the beginning of a political course. This is the difference. I don’t see any other problems there” he said concerning the difference between the “Alternative” and ANM.
In addition, Nycol Pashyan said that the citizens that advocate the ANM ideologies adopted in 1998 are faced with a choice since they have to choose the political power they want to join. The latter thinks that there should be actions in the future to save the process from being variated and failed. The latter also said that the “Alternative” was out of the sphere of party interests and memberships in political parties could not be an obstacle for citizens to join them since the purpose is to share with ideologies. Please note that several months ago the “Alternative” published handbooks, where they introduced their viewpoints and ideology concerning different issues.
“Today we are trying to start political actions basing on a model for the future, and later after finding advocates and people that will agree with us, we will start political actions to fulfill that model” said Mr. Pashinyan. The latter says that there shouldn’t be any issues to be discussed and clarified following the change of authorities. “We can’t change the ruling power and think about what we have to do later. We should know beforehand what we have to do just following the change of the ruling power” said the editor of “HJ” newspaper. Concerning this viewpoint Mr. Khachatryan said that “as far as the existing authorities are in power, it is impossible to do that through fair and democratic elections”. Mr. Pashinyan noted that they are still getting prepared for political actions, and thought they would be able to finish their preparation works and start their political actions program in February. The latter thinks that the existing political system in Armenia offers two choices to voters: either be the slaves of the Republican party or the slaves of the “Prosperous Armenia” party. “We reject that system and our goal is to do our best to work that system out. In a word, with the help of citizens we are going to reject that system and tell them that we don’t want to be slaves; we want to be independent citizens. As for freedom, we will choose freedom in the Freedom square” said Mr. Pashinyan. They assure that they don’t want to speak about the upcoming elections yet. “We don’t want to disorient our potential advocates so that they don’t think our goal is having mandates in the parliament” concluded Mr. Pashinyan. Mr. Khachatryan said that electoral bribe could not be an obstacle for them. He thinks that people vote consciously, but the problem is that the results turn to be what we have now. Mr. Pashinyan said that people thought they were given with agricultural products in odder to give their votes to them, which is not true. “They don’t do that for that purpose. They are doing it in order to ensure that people will not be suspicious if they record more votes. This is a trick to maintain that everyone will say that it is natural because they have given agricultural products and other things to voters” he said.