Perhaps based on the fact that this year is a pre-election year the Legal State Party decided to conduct a congress of several sessions. Of course, yesterday it was the turn of the youth wing of the party but the podium was mostly occupied by party “pensioners” – Artur Baghdasaryan, Mher Shahgeldyan and Heghine Bisharyan, rather than the youth representatives.
And in the hall the young people were only playing the role of applauders and exclaimers of “Orinac” and were waving the Legal State Party flags above their heads (almost everyone had a flag). For example the young Legal State members for the first time exclaimed “Orinac!” (while standing) and welcomed the entrance of the elder generation Party seniors to the hall, such as Artur Baghdasaryan, Mher Shahgeldyan and Samvel Balasanyan. This section lasted about 2-3 minutes. Later the old Armenian anthem was heard and then the senior Legal State members were one by one invited to the podium for a speech.
According to the Legal State party, at present it has about 100 thousand members. 20 thousand of them are young people involved in the Legal State Youth Union. “Since the Legal State left the coalition last year 4 000 young people have joined it,” President of the Youth Union of the party Samvel Farmanyan reported during the 4th conference of the Union. The young members of the party were elated: during the recurrent conference Arthur Baghdasaryan had not sent a greeting message but had arrived himself, accompanied by the deputies of the party. Moreover, he opened the conference himself, calling on the members of the party to be more active in the pre-election period. In order to provoke, them, the leader of the party promised to allot places to them in the election rolls. During the fourth conference the young members of the party made a plan to process a strategy and policy, and approaches towards the pre-election program, and to represent them to the political leaders of the party. Leaving the coalition chair and joining the people, the Legal State has noted many things it used to fail to notice. According to Arthur Baghdasaryan, “In Armenia, especially in the regions, poverty is attacking people”, and “illegalities breed like rabbits”. “According to the national youth report which was made public two months ago, there are about 840 thousand 16-30-year-old young people in Armenia 77% of which sees his future abroad”, mentioned Arthur Baghdasaryan calling on the young people to build their future in their own country.
“More young people will run for parliament on the ticket of the Legal State Party,” stated Baghdasaryan. “Young people with new approaches, new ideas will run for parliament on the Legal State ticket, who are determined to struggle for better Armenia,” Arthur Baghdasaryan stated. According to him, the Legal State Party are bold, ready and determined to run in the upcoming election, and young people have a word to say. “The ticket will be based on the principle of a clear political ideology, ability to work, in a political party, of course. In other words, there is no hierarchy, there are a few benchmarks which should be performed in political activities and parliamentary activities, we believe,” Mher Shahgeldyan says. He excluded that people may be included in the ticket of the party who may defect from the political party like the members of parliament who were elected to parliament in 2003 on the Legal State Party ticket.
“During its 10-year history the Legal State has been struggling for fairness, honesty and justice. I think you have a very good taste and made the right decision to be in the Legal State. You are in a party the leader of which is also young but has a great political experience. I think you trust us,” said Heghine Bisharyan when praising the Legal State and particularly Arthur Baghdasaryan. The speech of the head of the youth wing of the party, Samvel Farmanyan, was also remarkable. He was speaking in the same tone and about the same thing just like Baghdasaryan. “After the Legal State party deflected from the coalition and became opposition the party has recruited dozens of thousands of new young members,” said Farmanyan and spoke about birth issues and other social problems. Shortly said he started to speak about what Baghdasaryan loves to speak. In order to convince you that young Farmanyan is trying to imitate Baghdasaryan we’d like to quote the following, “How much longer shall we cope with the violations and irregularities that have existed since Soviet times and shift from rational to irrational? We deal with the criticism of those politicians, which cannot differentiate simple political terms. We have numerously mentioned cases of abusing the rights of young people and our citizens in general or for example the events in 2006, when a lot of pressure was put on media representatives.” Let’s mention that the young Legal State member hasn’t spoken about the events of April 12 just like his senior Baghdasaryan.
Later when speaking about the speech of Baghdasaryan the head of the youth wing said, “Of course all the efforts of the youth wing are going to be targeted on providing victory during the Parliamentary elections of your party. We are going to be actively involved in all electoral procedures. Our proxies and PEC members will permanently be at the polling stations to protect every single vote given to the Legal State during elections… Dear friends, it’s well known nothing else causes as much anxiety and thrill as hunting, parties and elections. It means that we have to spend many efforts to stop the possible violations of elections. Under these circumstances we the young people shouldn’t even recede our future to real charity because by accepting charity we surrender and give the keys to the doors of this country to others.”
The deputy leader of the Legal State Party Mher Shahgeldyan told reporters that the Legal State Party will make a decision on entering an alliance after the local organizations of the political parties come up with conclusions and opinions. In this sense, it is not clear whether the Legal State Party will ally with other political parties to run for parliament. Mher Shahgeldyan said this question is under consideration in the local organizations, and after their point of view becomes known, the political council of the party will make a decision. Mher Shahgeldyan puts off the question of alliances and only adds that the Legal State Party is ready to run for parliament both alone and in an alliance. “I think cooperation of political forces which believe in democracy will be necessary to fight irregularities and fraud in the election. We will see how this cooperation will take place,” says Mher Shahgeldyan, adding that their political party has got no proposals. Mher Shahgeldyan thinks it is important that the representative of every political force upholding a fair and legitimate election prove with their actions that they will go all the way to fight fraud in the divisional commissions. “We have stated for a number of times that with outrageous electoral fraud conflicts and major problems will occur inside the society. I find it difficult to tell, but it is clear that major conflicts will occur, Armenia will encounter problems both inside and outside the country,” Mher Shahgeldyan says.
P.S. Yesterday Farmanyan enumerated those success stories, which the young Legal State party members have been in – their successful paper defense, won grants offered by different international organizations.