Yesterday NA Deputy, Hakob Hakobyan, who had been nominated in Precinct 19 in Echmiadzin and later was deprived of his candidacy by the court decision, made a sensational announcement. He said that he was going to request his voters to vote for another Hakob Hakobyan from Yerevan. The latter also applied to the court to deprive Hakobyan from Echmiadzin of his Precinct registration.
Hakobyan explains his step with the fact that he is trying to “punish” the real author, who ordered to have him kicked out of the campaign. “As the idea of banishing me from the campaign belongs to General Seyran Saroyan, Hakobyan has only been following his order, and I will protect the one who accepted the order and punish the one who gave the order,” said Hakobyan of Echmiadzin and adds, “We need to punish the author and the author is Saroyan. He gave all the orders. Now we are going to protect only Hakobyan.” He also added that even if Hakobyan from Echmiadzin recalls his candidacy and Saroyan remains the only candidate in Echmiadzin, he will not win anyway because Hakobyan will ask his voters not to vote for Saroyan. “We will see if he’s going to win or not.” He said that on the voting day he and his supporters are going to keep an eye on all ballot boxes in Echmiadzin. “I think it will be the first time a single candidate will lose in Armenia,” predicted Hakobyan.
But as in fact Hakobyan of Echmiadzin is trying to protect Hakobyan from Yerevan to “revenge” on Saroyan we decided to talk to Hakobyan from Yerevan to find out what he thinks about this continuing process. It turned out that Hakobyan is ungrateful to the one who granted his favor. “My previous opponent and now a voter and free to do whatever he wants,” says Hakobyan from Yerevan. To our question whether he will benefit from Hakobyan’s support he said, “One vote does matter. If he even votes for me it still will be very useful and I’ll be thankful to him. However there is nothing special in what he said he’s going to do.” To our question whether he is not worried that Hakobyan’s supporters will not vote for another Hakobyan since the ones they actually supported is not running any more, Hakobyan from Yerevan answered, “I have supporters and thousands of voters in TEC#19. Thus his whether or not he will support me doesn’t matter very much. I’d like to repeat it, again. Let him protect or not protect me. It’s up to him. But I’d appreciate his support.”
As a response to why he had applied to the court to prove that Hakobyan from Echmiadzin shouldn’t be registered, Hakobyan from Yerevan said, “We have applied not to harm a person. We went to the court to make the procedure right, regardless of who the candidate was. I complained by saying that the TEC has made an incorrect decision. Thus I wasn’t against Hakobyan personally. If it was Saroyan I’d still do the same. My team has also checked Saroyan’s documents before nomination.” We asked Hakobyan whether he would file a court suit against Saroyan. He answered, “If there are illegalities I surely will.”