There is only one out of the 28 political parties registered at the Central Electoral Committee to participate in the proportional electoral system elections that is unknown and that is the National United Liberal Party (NULP).
It turned out that “168 Hours” could not have found out anything about this party, say last week, because it still was not registered. Secretary General of the party Levon Martirosyan told “168 Hours” during a telephone conversation that NULP had turned in its documents to the state register a couple of days ago and had applied to the Central Electoral Committee (CEC) immediately after getting registration to participate in the upcoming Armenian parliamentary elections.
“We presented the legal documents to the state register on Sunday and got registered. There is no motive for founding the party besides the desire to take part in politicla processes,” said Levon Martirosyan. “It’s your average political party and it does not differ from the rest”. “168 Hours” asked Martirosyan why they founded a new party if it does not differ from the rest, to which he replied:
“We founded it so that we would participate in the political processes with our own political party”.
Although the name of the party already talks about the party’s ideology, but we still wanted to find out the political party’s program would be and what issues it will try to solve.
“We are a newly founded party and still haven’t published our charter. We will soon have our own website and everything concerning our programs and charter will be shown on the website. But I must mention that we are a liberal party and propose implementing liberal, cardinal reforms,” said Levon Martirosyan.
Since the founding of new parties during the pre-electoral period is not something new in Armenia (let’s recall the “Justice” political party founded before the 2003 National Assembly elections), let’s mention that this party would not interest us if the second name on the proportional electoral system list was not familiar. As surprising as it sounds, the second person on the NULP proportional electoral list is participant and editor of “Comedy Club”, beloved Garik Martirosyan, who is brother of Secretary General of the NULP Levon Martirosyan. Garik is the only “particularity” of this party. Levon Martirosyan does not hide that fact either. In response to our question as to why Garik has decided to get involved in the political field, L. Martirosyan replied:
“Who said that he has decided to get involved in politics? He is on the list so that there will be more members on the list and to participate in the electoral campaign. Yes, Garik is far from politics. Everybody on the list has been far from politics until now. There is nobody on the list who has been involved in politics up to this point”.
L. Martirosyan also affirmed that Garik Martirosyan will come to Armenia as soon as the prep-electoral campaign begins and will participate in the NULP campaign.
P.S. The NULP list comprises 23 people.